Description:

The National Weather Service (NWS) is undertaking an initiative to systematically reflect the field's needs into developers’ requirements in order to fundamentally improve the connection between the requirements and solution development processes. Solutions for NWS models have been developed without referring to the corresponding requirements because the requirements didn’t exist. The situation has improved recently with the requirements now being developed, but gathering, vetting, and validating requirements is by nature a time-consuming structured process, and the requirements may not be delivered to the developers in time. Therefore, we are trying to effectively align the requirements development process with the solution development cycles. The Analysis and Nowcast Branch (AFS11) of the Analyze, Forecast and Support Office has been applying this initiative in developing requirements for tools in the analysis and forecast range (note that we are expanding the scope from short-term range to any forecast range to cover the whole forecast range). We are organizing a Town Hall Meeting to continue to discuss ways to alleviate related issues and improve the NWS’ analysis and forecasting.