Category ' Articles ' - Page 7 of 10

22nd February 20179th May 2017

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

A Picture…

A proverb, a newspaper editor’s comment on journalism, a printer’s marketing spiel, the origin as discussed in Wikipedia and throughout the web is a little muddied. However, we think you’ll agree that a picture can convey very quickly what you would need many paragraphs to say.

There are many uses of images and pictures in capture, design and development. From the customer’s point of view this may be the easiest way to communicate what they want, even if they don’t know the language of the supplier. The designer drawing a picture of how the system operates is creating a model that communicates more than the specifications of each part. Images of anything from an oscilloscope trace to a microscope slide may be used as evidence of meeting a requirement. Photos of the final implementation can be a fabulous selling point.

Pictures in Cradle

Each of these elements can be captured in Cradle throughout the lifecycle of a product.
Here a requirement, capturing a photo of the location for the installation, provides the user with the textual description (Latitude and Longitude) and a clear visualisation of the site.

The model itself, and pictorial annotations within, can illustrate the design. The design model itself is supported through numerous notations including (to name but a few):

Holistically viewed with SysML (Systems Modelling Language) notations.
SysML Disgrams
Behaviourally described along a timeline with eFFBD (Extended Functional Flow Block Diagram)
Described in OO (Object-Oriented) methods with Use Case Diagrams describing how the system sits in its environment with CPDs (Component Diagrams) describing the parts
Functionally modelled through Yourdon DFDs (Data Flow Diagrams) and STDs (State Transition Diagrams) etc.
Pictures inserted in a Data Flow Diagram

A copy of a test certificate can be stored in a compliance item type, linked back through the design to the requirement. These could then be printed as an HTML report or more formally as figures within a Document Publisher output.

Images included in View, Form and Printed output

From concept to creation, you, Cradle and 3SL!

17th February 201710th May 2017

Contents of a Cradle database

Each Cradle database contains different sets of information. These can be imagined as layers, where each layer uses the data in the layers below it. For example, cross references cannot exist until the items exist whose relationships are shown by the cross reference. These layers are, highest to lowest:

1. Cross references – the links between the data
2. Items – the data
3. Definitions – how to find, view and report the data
4. User profiles – who can own and access the data
5. Schema – the structure of the data

You can export/import each layer individually, or in any combination, or all layers. You should only import a layer of information if the lower layers already exist in the database (unless you know that it is safe).

To initialise a new database from an existing database, you need as a minimum:

– The schema
– Definitions

User profiles are needed to use a database and may be needed for some parts of the schema (such as workflows and alerts) and definitions (user and personal scopes).

15th February 201730th January 2019

Clear Requirements

The Problem

The teacher, or your customer, envisages a house built on a hill, they see this as their requirements. In their mind they understand what they want, they have an inherent understanding of how a house should be oriented.

The pupil, or supplier, may not have the same inherent understanding and this can disappoint the customer.

House 'on' in the loose sense, a hill — Requirement for a house ‘on’ a hill

The Managed Requirements Solution

Managing requirements, managing expectations, ensuring clear and unambiguous understanding creates a successful project and a happy customer.

Furthermore, following a defined process of elicitation, discussion, refinement and validation will ensure all parties are kept in the picture throughout the process. There should be no surprises.

The stages can be generalised as:

recording the Customer requirements (what the teacher said);
connecting these to System Requirements (what the pupil thinks is the right way to place a house on the hill);
reviewing and verifying with the customer that all is clear and understood (the teacher has a chance to see that the relative orientation has not been considered);
correction and update;
build and validate;
Happy customer!

Equally we live in the real world and thing need and do change. A process needs to cope with and manage those changes. These may be customer initiated, corrections as part of the refinement and understanding stage, or external influences.

Control and Managing Change

This could be through a set of documents, but this is not very scalable. The more complex and numerous the requirements, the more difficult it is to manage the inter dependencies between different parts of the document set.

Imagine the simple case in our example:

“The foundations shall comply with building regulation ABC”.

It is easy enough to imagine one chapter with some dimensions for the foundations and one building regulation document.

Remaining with the simplistic house:

“Kitchen wiring shall provide one outlet for each of the 12 appliances in accordance with regulation GHI(i)”,
“Lounge wiring shall provide a multiple in window bay and one outlet in each of the other corners in accordance with regulation GHI(i)”,
“Bedroom 1 shall provide one outlet in each corner of the room in accordance with regulation GHI(i)”,
“Bedroom2….”

It is still possible to get your head round the interconnects. It will be a bit more time consuming when GHI(i) is up-released to GHI(ii) and building work hasn’t started and you have to check all the items ordered for the socket outlets still comply in each room.

Conclusion

With a small scale step the complexity the above can soon become unmanageable. Our house may only have seven rooms, but what if these were tens of different compartments on a submarine, hundreds shops owned by a national retailer? GHI(ii)- sub section ‘Public accessible spaces’ is upgraded after a regulatory consultation. How many room specifications are affected?

In a managed solution, a simple report on elements dependent on GHI will give a quick way of calculating the cost impact of altering all the specified outlets. If the power outlets had been categorised when the requirements were written with say Public / Employee / Private access, the number affected, and thus the impact to your customer, could have been further refined.

Article Updated 30/01/2019 – Updated formatting

7th February 201711th May 2017

False Positives from Symantec

False positives were recently reported by the Symantec and Trend Micro Office Scan Anti-Virus (AV) products. In both cases, they falsely reported a problem with the c_image.exe executable (which simply displays images, such as the Cradle splash screen).

We have arrangements with these and other AV vendors to pre-qualify Cradle executables before release. We do not know why these products have started to produce false positives for c_image.exe, since this executable has not changed and has previously been included in these products’ whitelists.

We have reported this problem to both vendors and can confirm that c_image.exe is in the whitelists of these products as of 11.1.17.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

7th February 201719th July 2018

From Now to Goal – Requirements Management

Goal

If you don’t know where you are currently, or how you arrived or what your ultimate goal is, how do you know in which direction to head? Requirements Management is a skill made easier by the full traceability of tools such as Cradle.

From – Now – Goal

Build Me a Home

Starting a project without having a base understanding of the situation is a like building a house on unstable foundations. When the walls start to wander you’ll have no idea whether it was because the foundations were not level or were inappropriate or whether the direction of the wall is simply wrong.

Not knowing the ultimate goal could lead to a double height wall being built for a bungalow.

If you have no measure of how high the wall currently stands, you’ll have no chance of estimating how long it will take to finish.

Baseline, Elicit and Measure

It may sound obvious when applied to the ‘simple’ task of building a home. It appears ridiculous to start building without knowing whether our goal is a bungalow, house or flat. Yet many projects start with a very loose understanding between stakeholders and producers and can head off in the wrong direction.

Baseline

Do we know the current situation? Do the foundations exist, is this a single storey build that needs extending with an upper floor or are we to start from scratch. Are there any assumptions we need to record, this project assumes that there bedrock will be found within a metre.

Elicit Requirements

Have we investigated what the customer / stakeholder actually wants? We could achieve the same m² with two storeys or one larger floor. No point building a house and then finding mobility restrictions mean a bungalow was needed. Do they actually need a house. The baseline may show they actually have somewhere to live and all they need is some more storage. We could provide them with a shed and achieve their goal. This honesty in not selling them a new house may mean we have a smaller turnover, but a far better reputation. This should lead to repeat and new business as knowledgeable supplier.

Measure

This needs to be done at each stage. Internally we need to know that we are meeting the design. When do we stop building the walls? Externally we need to know that the customer is going to be happy. Milestones and intermediate reviews will prevent big surprises at the end. Whilst we want to avoid requirements creep, we have no intention to build a mansion for the price of a flat, customer requirements change and to remain agile, we need to build in steps to accommodate change.

Summary

If you can see the sense in this simplistic example you have every justification you need to correctly control and manage your project. If you can’t see the point, you’re likely to return to your back of envelope calculations and assumptions of what your customer needs. Good luck to you, but we’d prefer you to take steps to de-risk your plans. Put yourself on the receiving end, a 20 storey building each with a floor of 1m*1m and a ladder pinned to the outside. It fulfils the requirements, but you try sleeping in your new bedsit.

2nd February 201730th March 2020

Manual ‘ V’ Cradle

Compare

When it comes to managing your requirements and designs there really is no contest between a manual based system and a tool based system. A cross referenced and baselined design in Cradle is your ultimate goal.

Manual

A manual based system at worst is a set of paper requirements, managed in folders with paper-clips and sticky notes. An electronic system may include a number of word processor documents, drawings and spreadsheets. These have very limited, or manually updated meta data to describe how they interlink.

RM tool

A Requirements Management and Systems Engineering software tool brings these elements together in one place and provides the meta data and traceability that binds them together into a successful project.

Paper and pencil versus Cradle — Manual versus Cradle

15th January 20178th October 2018

How to publish formal project documents

Publish a Formal Document

A formal document is a document with special significance to you. When you publish a formal document, it appears in the ‘formal documents’ list in the UI. You can open the formal document in Word, compare it to other formal documents and other versions of the same formal document, and see the items that were published inside it. You can select items and see in which formal documents they have been published, so if the items change, you know which formal documents to re-issue.

When you publish a document from Document Publisher, you choose to publish it, or to publish it as a ‘formal document’. You use the same template in both cases. When you publish your template as a formal document, you can:

Specify a name to identify the formal document
Specify an issue (eg Draft A), issue date (eg 20160102) and a reference (eg ABC/DEF001-01) unique across all formal documents.

You can use these values inside the template, for example so they appear on the cover page. When Document Publisher publishes a formal document, uses the template in the same way as when it is published as a normal document, but also:

Updates the ‘document register’ that records all versions of all formal and source documents
Saves the formal document in the database
Records the instances (versions etc) of all items published in that version of the formal document

A new formal document is version 1. Later, you can publish a new version of that same document, which will be version 2, and so on.

There is a summary of this in the white paper here:
https://www.threesl.com/downloads/download.php?version=v7.1&section=whitepapers&filename=ra00102-Document_Management.pdf

13th January 20178th October 2018

B2B Supply Chain, A Requirements Management Task?

Scenario

“Good morning, are our Wonder Widgets ready yet?”

“Urm, Yes…., I think so, I’ll just check with packaging”

“If you could just include your conformance report with the consignment, that would be great”

“Report, yes, I’ll add one…”

Image of the conformance checker window — Conformance Checker

“Great, that just gives my team the confidence that everything from the mechanical safety standards to the power unit’s supply duration are all up to scratch. We’re happy to pay the extra for a fast courier if that means they will be here tomorrow”

“Mmm, power unit! urm, I’ll get on to it… Bye”

Dissecting the problem

Oh dear, wasn’t it clear that the power unit was part of the sourcing deal? Did you just forget? What was the required duration? Where can I source 300 on a Thursday afternoon?

Managing a supply chain is just like managing the individual requirements of an in-house project. Just because you don’t manufacture each item doesn’t mean you don’t have to manage its specification, purchase and conformance. Changes to your customer’s original specification need to be managed all along the chain. That’s only possible if the links are clearly defined.

By importing your customer’s original documentation as a set of requirements, creating items from your supplier’s specifications and linking them together you can ensure complete coverage of your project’s vital obligations.

Trace and control your customer’s needs with your supplier’s products, commodities, crops or services and ensure you’re not the weakest link in the supply chain.

22nd December 201611th May 2017

Installation Issues With .NET Framework

During installation, some customers see messages that the .NET framework cannot be installed, or the currently-installed version cannot be found. Cradle needs the 4.6.1 or later release. We supply this version with Cradle-7.1 and later releases. All parts of the Cradle Toolsuite for Microsoft Office (including Document Loader, Document Publisher, SpellChecker, Project Link, Visio Link and so on) use .NET.

To fix these issues, you must install Windows updates. Since updates may allow other updates to install, you repeatedly install all Windows updates until no more will install. See the figure. Then install all remaining parts of Cradle. Your installation may not display exactly as shown. You may have multiple versions of the .NET framework installed.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

24th November 201610th November 2022

False Positive from Bitdefender AV and Related Products

A false positive is reported by the Bitdefender AV product (and products based on it, such as Solarwinds’ AV Defender) for the Cradle Database Server (CDS).

We have arrangements with other AV vendors to pre-qualify Cradle executables before release, but this mechanism does not exist for Bitdefender. We have requested that they add Cradle executables to their whitelist.

In the meantime, if you use Bitdefender or a product based on it, please disable this AV product before installing Cradle, and enable it again afterwards.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.