The last RM training this year is – Requirements Management August 2021 course.
“A great opportunity for small teams, or a couple of new team members to get started with RM and Cradle”
Online Course
Businesses that are introducing Cradle and full Requirements Management processes into their operations, can book training for all aspects of the roll-out, from the basics through to specialist administration courses – See here. These courses are tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements and are ideal for getting a team up and running.
Public Requirements Management August 17th – 19th 2021
If, however, you have one or two people new to a project or only have a very small team, this may not be a viable solution. With 3SL’s public online courses, you’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. This can be a cost effective solution to get you up to speed with Cradle and Requirements Management.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Requirements Management August 2021 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
Another chance to brush up on 3SL’s RM functionality with – Requirements Management May 2021 course.
“A great opportunity for small teams, or a couple of new team members to get started with RM and Cradle”
Online Course
Businesses that are introducing Cradle and full Requirements Management processes into their operations, can book training for all aspects of the roll-out, from the basics through to specialist administration courses – See here. These courses are tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements and are ideal for getting a team up and running.
Public Requirements Management May 18th – 20th 2021
If, however, you have one or two people new to a project or only have a very small team, this may not be a viable solution. With 3SL’s public online courses, you’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. This can be a cost effective solution to get you up to speed with Cradle and Requirements Management.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Requirements Management May 2021 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
Provide the best project setup and support that your users expect with this year’s – System Administration July 2021 course.
“A great opportunity for administration staff to get up to speed with their Cradle installations”
Online System Administration Course
Businesses that have selected Cradle for their Requirements Management or Systems Engineering process can benefit from an in depth understanding on managing their installation.
System Administration Course July 2021
The System Administrator’s course is designed for project team or IT managers who look after, setup and roll out Cradle. It will cover installation, user, project and database administration. It will also include setting up project schemas helping your users to hit the ground running. Most industries have only a few people that act as administrators, therefore the public course is ideal. However, if you have a larger team, want to cover multiple topics, courses can be tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements or online at a date and time to suit see here.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – System Administration July 21st 2021 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
3SL’s first training course this year is – Requirements Management February 2021 course.
“A great opportunity for small teams, or a couple of new team members to get started with RM and Cradle”
Online Course
Businesses that are introducing Cradle and full Requirements Management processes into their operations, can book training for all aspects of the roll-out, from the basics through to specialist administration courses – See here. These courses are tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements and are ideal for getting a team up and running.
Public Requirements Management February 23rd – 25th 2021
If, however, you have one or two people new to a project or only have a very small team, this may not be a viable solution. With 3SL’s public online courses, you’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. This can be a cost effective solution to get you up to speed with Cradle and Requirements Management.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Requirements Management February 2021 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
3SL are offering a number of Cradle public training courses in 2021.
Cradle Training
Public courses are ideal for companies;
with a small number of candidates
starting using Cradle but not needing an industry tailored course
using more advanced features
These courses supplement the tailored, industry/implementation specific consultancy and training offered by 3SL. These public courses can be a cost effective solution where you’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries.
These are subject to change and additional courses may be added as required. Booking will become available through the website shop for credit/debit card transactions prior to each course. For purchase orders and transfer payments please contact 3SL.
Make your output shine with this year’s Cradle report creation training – Document Publisher June 2021 course.
“Once you have managed your requirements and development, producing a comprehensive report, automatically based directly on the project data, provides an essential deliverable”
Online Course
Businesses that have Cradle for their Requirements Management or Systems Engineering process can benefit from additional Cradle tools.
Document Publisher is a Windows® based publishing tool that allows professional documentation to be produced directly from the data within you project’s database. Fully understanding how to configure templates and data manipulation will offer the best output for you to provide to your stakeholders and customers, regulators and other interested parties.
Public Document Publisher Course June 2021
Often the document production task is run by an individual or a very small team. Therefore, this public online course will offer a cost effective way of providing training. You’ll benefit from all the normal learning, but will have the chance to network and share with other virtual attendees from other industries. However, if you have a larger team courses can be tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements at a date and time to suit see here.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Document Publisher June 2021 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
Decorating a tree in the winter months has been a very long tradition. It has been used to celebrate Christmas by Christians since mediæval times, spreading from Northern Europe, through Germany. Popularity in the UK was driven by Queen Victoria from 1832 onwards. Fruits, berries, candy canes and biscuits/pastries have all been used to bring cheer over the years. From the mid 1500s glass ornaments from Lauscha began to spread in popularity (Modern examples of the preservation of this art ). These artisan glass globes took much skill and time to create. From 1880 Woolworths started selling Lauscha glass ornaments, by 1910 these were available across the whole of the USA.
Engineering to the Rescue
Consumer demand required mass production techniques. Now millions of these sparkly globes are available very cheaply. These days they are frequently blown or injection moulded plastic. The story of the bauble is a typical demand led example of engineering product development. However, it has also been possible to scale up mass produced glass. Vitbis in Poland produces 200,000 baubles a day!. Some include very intricate hand crafted designs.
Office
Paper Christmas tree
The office Christmas may well be a bit different this year. Fears over handling decorations, being unable to disinfect the extra surfaces may well prohibit their use. It may also be, as with 3SL, most staff are still working from home.
For a bit of fun Christmas paper engineering, you may like to download our DIY paper tree, for you own desk at work or home. ( Take a photo and Tweet it @threesl )
And here’s a bit of recycling – What happened to the little boy who ate the shiny streamers off the Christmas tree – He caught tinselitus! (If you want to read about the history of tinsel another Christmas manufacturing story see ‘a tinsel tale ‘ from @festive_UK who manufacture miles of the stuff in Cwmbran.
Happy Christmas
Season’s Greetings
May we take this opportunity to wish you, our wonderful customers, suppliers and distributors, season’s greetings and a peaceful and happy Christmas. We wish you all the best in 2021.
Lookback
Well I don’t think any of us could have predicted 2020 would pan out the way it did. We know it has been tough for everyone and our sympathies go to all those who have lost someone dear.
New year started with gusto. 3SL gearing up for the next release of Cradle
Covid hits and 3SL, along with many of our customers learn to cope with a different set of 4 walls.
3SL staff work from home implementing the Cradle 7.6
3SL offers its first public training courses in the UK swapped to virtual training forums due to the restrictions.
We take the opportunity to add some refinements to database processing in the CDS (Cradle Database Server).
As you read this December 2020 newsletter, please take a moment to remember the many charities and causes that have struggled over this year, and if you are able, dig into your pockets.
Requirements ManagementandModel Based Systems Engineering capabilities (MBSE) all combined in a tool for massively scalable engineering. Cradle is the hugely powerful software tool solution. It is available in a number of single user versions, or as tailored multi user enterprise packages. You can own and install it yourself or opt for SaaS hosting. Act Now to take advantage of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2020 discount. From the initial inception of your project through requirements elicitation, analysis, design, testing and documentation phases of your project, Cradle is there to support you. With this great offer we’re giving you even better value, or offering to support a charity – see ‘Enterprise licences’.
Single User Product Discount
Use the special discount voucher code to get £100** off any single user product. If you already use a previous version of Cradle, this year’s Black Friday is an ideal opportunity to upgrade to the latest version.
All you need to do is enter the £100** discount voucher code in the “Discount Code” field at the bottom of the shop checkout page during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2020 flash deal.
Enterprise Licences
We will offer £100** off EACHlicence purchased during the offer period. For SaaS the discount will be taken off the per-user fee***. This may be taken as a discount from your invoice or you can nominate a registered charity of your choice and 3SL will make an equivalent donation. If you find your project is expanding and you add a single REQ licence for another engineer you can claim one £100** discount / donation. If you are buying a new set of licences for a project say 5-REQ, 2-SYS and 1-MET that’s a total of 8*£100 = £800 off the licence cost, or a lovely donation to a charity of your choice.
“The project output should be limited to 15 rows” “I hope we don’t argue anywhere near that much!”
Whilst the examples above are intended to amuse they do highlight the need to be clear about your intention. Whilst they are a play on the English language, translations to and from customers and suppliers can cause equal ambiguity, especially if auto translated. Using a well known search engine the phrase “The ship shall have a 50m bow” translated to Greek “Το πλοίο θα έχει τόξο 50 μέτρων” and back again “The ship will have an arc of 50 meters” which could easily be interpreted as its turning ability rather than the size of the prow. We just hope they see sense and don’t order yards of ribbon. The addition of engineering drawings would, in this case have made the design request clear. It could also be achieved by having the requirements in a hierarchical order. If this sentence appeared as a sub requirement of dimensions rather then manoeuvrability.
Interpretation
What is smooth?
Smooth Welding
We have previously noted the difference between “should” and “shall”, that which is a desire and that which is a must. However, it is still important to remember the context and understanding of your stakeholders and suppliers. Say you need a framework to support a conveyor belt in a factory, you may contact a steelwork supplier. The required dimensions and weight bearing characteristics could be specified with a clear tolerance and safety margin. You may also specify that ‘all surfaces are smooth’ . The latter requirement being driven by the need to keep your employees and products from getting cuts or snagged from rough welds or sharp edges.
Your supplier is used to making conveyor systems for use in food and medical supply factories. To them ‘smooth’ implies a high quality stainless steel, with surface pitting limited to parts of a millimetre to allow for hygienic sterilisation. This sort of accuracy and finishing does not come cheap. A bit over the top given your conveyor is only moving some boxes of nails and screws to a palletising area. Whilst this would have given an over manufactured product that fulfilled the brief, it would have been far worse if the customer supplier situation had been reversed. It is important to remember there are many different view points depending where you sit in the chain. Understanding these differences and making your requirements match can reduce costs and prevent mistakes.
Manufacture
Oops!
Even with clear unambiguous instructions, the implementation can still go awry. A requirement for a level concrete shed base that needed to be 13ft by 9ft, given to a local landscaper seemed pretty unambiguous. Dimensions and context were all clear. The site was cleared and the shuttering ordered. The 2″*4″(nominal) timber was cut and assembled. What could go wrong? Each piece of timber had been cut to a fairly precise tolerance. Oops! The width of the wood had not been taken into consideration. The internal width was therefore only 8’8″ and not 9ft…… Luckily this was caught by customer checking before the concrete was poured, otherwise it would have been very difficult to rectify. In many cases manufacture could be too far down the line to amend in the same way as the shuttering was extended. Prototypes and intermediate component validation can all help.
Take AIM
Plan and understand, to avoid requirement failure
Avoid Ambiguity use sensible breakdown and context,
Ensure all your suppliers and stakeholders make the same Interpretation
Check the Manufacture meets the design
Use the right tools to make your job easier and traceable
Don’t try and juggle the data in many different silos. You should ensure your requirements, design, risks, and measurements are held in one linked dataset. Select Cradle and AIM for quality and success.
[1] The term “guv” or guv’ner a contraction of governor a colloquial deference to a ‘boss’ or ‘chief’
[2] The terms “cab” and “taxi” are accepted as synonymous. They refer to a vehicle that can be hired for transportation. Customers are picked up from one location and driven to another, the vehicle is known as a taxicab. The terms “cab” or “taxi” are derived from the same root. Cab is more common in the USA and Taxi more frequently used in the UK.
