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Work Experience – June 2019

Work Experience – Introduction

Chetwynde School gave us the opportunity to go on a week’s work experience 3rd to the 7th June. One such placement was at 3SL giving a chance for students to gain knowledge of work life and improve their skills in the field or area of work they would like to go into. Work experience is an opportunity for a change in environment, from classroom to work life.

Monday 3rd June

On Monday we started the task of going through the tutorial of Cradle which is 3SL’s product. Cradle software was something very different to what had been done in school. This also meant we had to learn something new. We also had read through an employee handbook, you would have to do this if you were a real employee.

Tuesday 4th June

Tuesday’s tasks were to finish the tutorial (image below) but after finishing the tutorial we moved onto some task’s which required our knowledge of the software Cradle, of which we had to run some tests on. These tests are what the support team deals with.

Work Experience Diary June Cradle
Cradle

Wednesday 5th June

Wednesday consisted of the tasks of counting each individual stationary object and recording it. This task was difficult and had to sort it into the requirements e.g. colour. (Image below) This also took a reasonable amount of time, but we were able to get it done in the end.

Work_Experience Diary June Spreadsheet
Data Attribute Task

Thursday 6th June

We had to make a CV and cover letter for a mock interview that we were going to have that afternoon. The interview had many different questions. Such as ‘How would you describe yourself’.  We were also given a design task. This task made us think of a solution to a problem, and also the health and safety behind it.

Work Experience Diary June Design task
Design Task

Friday 7th June

On Friday we had finished our data tasks. Also we had started a new task which was to create a blog or social media entry which was on behalf of the company. This is a good way to spread new information about the company so people are able to know what they offer.

Overall, it was a interesting experience and we would recommend it to anyone who wants to work in this field.

Chetwynde School Logo
Chetwynde School

By: Elliot S and Joseph I

From Chetwynde School

 

 

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Cradle 7.5 – Released

We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.5!

This is available for download from the 3SL website.

3SL customers with active maintenance have been sent an e-mail notification, and details of which enhancement requests and bug reports are in it. You will be issued with a new security code free of charge.

Cradle 7.5 Logo
Cradle 7.5

New Capabilities

Cradle-7.5 contains a range of new capabilities, some of the highlights are:

  • ReqIF support – Our current import and export functionality has been extended to support Requirements Interchange Format (ReqIF).
  • Web Service Interface – Support for Web Services.
  • ODBC support – In addition to the shipped ISAM Database, it is now possible to store your Cradle data in a different database via ODBC (Open Database Connectivity).
  • Matrices/Navigations – The contents tab of the Matrix Details dialog has been enhanced regarding navigations.
  • Queries – Regular expressions on frames has now been extended to support sequential testing.
  • Systems Modelling – Increased integration between models and non-model information in system notes/requirements.

Download

Cradle-7.5 available from our website here.

You need a new Security Code for Cradle-7.5, as other Security Codes cannot be used.

Cradle clients (WorkBench, Web Access, Document Publisher for instance.) and server (Cradle CDS) versions can not be mixed. Therefore, you must upgrade all Cradle installations to 7.5.

However, because there are not fundamental changes to the data attributes there is no converter to run for a 7.4 to 7.5 upgrade. Full details are available in the release notes, and updated manuals in addition you can always contact support@threesl.com .

We hope that you will welcome the new capabilities in Cradle-7.5

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May 2019 Newsletter

Let’s Party 9001!

Pizza all round celebrating 3SL gaining ISO9001
ISO9001 Celebration

It been great news for the Barrow HQ of 3SL (Structured Software Systems Limited) we’ve received our ISO9001:2015 certificate in the post.

We celebrated in true engineering style by ordering pizzas for everyone in the office, and reporting it in the May 2019 newsletter.

  • Will dealing with 3SL change?
    • For over 30 years we’ve been providing a great product and in depth support and training. This will not change, we will continue to serve you and your business as before.
  • Will the prices go up?
    • We believe Cradle has always been good value for money, we won’t be using our certification as an excuse to charge more.
  • Will contacting 3SL be a more lengthy process?
    • No, our quality systems are part of our daily operation. We may have tweaked the odd process, but we will still log and deal with your information and requests in the professional manner to which you are accustomed.
  • Does this mean that Cradle will change?
    • No the product will remain the same until the next update and the release of Cradle 7.5
  • 3SL ISOQAR Certificate Number 16926 ISO 9001
    Certificate Number 16926 ISO 9001:2015

    So why did you apply for a certificate?

    • We asked Mark Walker our Managing Director, he replied “ISO9001 is an external recognition that the processes and quality at 3SL and its Cradle products are measurable, traceable and of a consistent standard. This will give our customers an added assurance that when they deal with 3SL they can do so with confidence in our software development and service delivery”

IADT

Quality assurance for the business is very closely related to the quality assurance of your products. We have covered, a number of times in various articles, the fact that we need to know what our goals are, measure where  we currently are, and then ensure we head in the right direction. When we finally have a set of clear requirements, we need a way to measure whether what we have achieved meets the original stakeholders’ expectations. This is where requirement confirmation is employed.

the 4 types of requirement confirmation
Verification and Validation in the Systems Lifecycle
  • Inspection
  • Analysis
  • Demonstration
  • Test

Are methods by which we can measure our solutions and compare them with the original requirement. Read more in this article, The 4 Types of Requirement Confirmation

Social Media

Twitter

Sandia labs told the story of a miniature spectrometer in this Tweet
Sandia labs Spectrometer Tweet

Could your mobile phone camera detect rancid food? It’s an amazing possibility for a miniature spectrometer.

We shouted about a new review site in our tweet @AlternativeTo

We re-visited a discussion on whether a baseline is the end of the road or a stepping stone in Configuration Management.

…and Finally.

St George was a Dragon slayer,
Dragons were slayed by George,
If you’ve never seen a Dragon to-date………..
Can that be used as conclusive proof that he was a 100% effective solution???
Your thoughts on this and any other blog topics you would like to raise send to  social-customer@threesl.com

 

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April 2019 Newsletter

Spring Has Sprung

Spring flowers on Barrow's roundabouts
Spring Bulbs

With Easter upon us, its a time of renewal and new life. We love that just outside our offices we can see the signs of new leaves on the trees, beautifully planted Barrow Borough Council roundabouts and hanging baskets, and playful businesses selling their wares on the street.

For those of you used to reading the 3SL newsletter, you’ll see that there is a new broom sweeps clean, spring is the time to start afresh parable style link coming, so here goes….

Spring trees on Barrow high street
Spring Leaves

“Spring, the cycle will goes on  new shoots will grow from the old and the plant will expand. However, as any gardener knows,  pruning an old herbaceous plant, will result in more vigorous new life.”

Here it comes…..

“Whilst you may have systems in place, that sprout an odd shoot,  really vigorous process improvement will not occur on old gnarled wood.

Spring on Barrow high street
Spring Fun

Look hard at your processes give them a good hard prune, and reap the rewards. As a gardener needs sharp secateurs, good software tools help you manage your business, design and implementation processes. #Cradle from 3SL”

Beta Testing

We’re implementing the last tweaks to Cradle 7.5. Thanks for those who provided feedback. Look out for ReqIF import, Cradle Web Services, and alternative database storage.

G Cloud

g-cloud HMGovernment
G-Cloud

We’re busy in the process of ensuring Cradle is available on the forthcoming  G-Cloud 11

Social Media

Twitter

Skyways drone
Skyways drone

We trust no one fell for the April Fool, but we did like the thought of superfast fibre installation!

We wondered if #Airbus’ Skyways drone could be a way to ensure the martini is delivered shaken and not stirred to our luxury yacht. (mmmmm, we’ll have to buy one of those first).

And we revisited our functional / non-functional requirements post.

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March 2019 Newsletter

Phew!

Julius Caesar statue from Pexels.com
Julius Caesar

We made it through the Ides of March without any problems. However, it’s never good news if you leave your project to visions of a ‘Seer’. Whilst it would be nice to be able to have certainty over the outcome of a project, the truth is all we can do is be as prepared as we can and plan for those things we know. We also have to plan for the things that ‘might’ happen.

Risk

The things that we can’t predict for certainty are risks to the project or the business. Using a ‘Risk’ item type in Cradle is one way of recording the thoughts likelihood and severity of a risk. These risks could be cross-referenced to any of your project items. You could then add a ‘Mitigation’ item type  and cross reference it to the risk. Add a few categories to hold risk re-evaluation dates and your more or less done. A query showing these linked items gives you a printable risk register.

Risk register in Cradle - Don't leave it to a Seer
Risk Register – “Beware the Ides of March”
Risk Rule Set set-up
Risk Rule Set

With your choice of category values for the severity and likelihood and your choice of overall result, it is possible to set up a Cradle Ruleset to calculate the ‘result’ for your risk. We suggest you also add a further severity and likelihood column with values you perceive post mitigation in place. This will ensure you always believe the risk has been reduced following the application of your risk plan.

Beta Testing

Thank you to all the distributors and advanced customer currently testing the Cradle 7.5 software. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Social Media

Twitter

Tweet about @renishawplc from @JumpstartRandD
@JumpstartRandD tweet @renishawplc

We had tasty chocolate Crêpe in the office for Shrove Tuesday. Can you Draw a Pancake Flow Diagram?

We were amazed at a direct brain injection method for drugs to possibly reverse Parkinson’s disease.

Don’t forget you can always @ include @threesl on any of your engineering tweets, and we may re-tweet them.

…and Finally.

circus tent - based on unsplash.com photo
Circus

Last month 3SL again donated to  Circus Starr “The Circus with a Purpose” ‘A touring circus boasting world-class, professional artists from across the globe. It was first founded in 1987 and provides free seats for thousands of disadvantaged, disabled or vulnerable children, whilst helping to raise much needed funds for local charities.’

It’s nice to put a smile onto someone’s face.

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Is Nineteen a Magic Number?

Nineteen

A Number

19

It’s a number cardinally one more than 18, and one less than 20. It is a prime number, which some may class as mysterious . It can be prefixed with twenty, to start a long count down, or denote ‘this’ year (’20’-’19’).  Physics considers it one short of being magic in the sequence of nucleons in atomic shells (2, 8, 20, 50). In middle English nynetene derived from the concatenation of nigon + -tīene, but that does not make it magic. It was a political statement in a song by Paul Hardcastle, but it didn’t change the world.  It can be represented as XIX, 0x13, 10011 or |||| |||| |||| |||| but that does not make it magic. In the local shepherd counting dialect Cumbric, a Brittonic Celtic language,  it is Medder-a-Mimph (4 & 15),  which may sound magical, but casts no spell. It is a rather dark grey html color:rgb(19, 19, 19)▉ . Overall, there appears to be little significance to the number 19.

Too Few or Too Many?

However, in terms of Requirements, it could be a magic number. It does depend on your view point.

Dashboards showing ranges where 19 is good, insufficient or bad
19 A magic number?

Our example dashboard shows the same 19 Requirements could be considered Good, Insufficient or Over the top! If our example manufacturer is measuring the number of requirements for their  Information Display Unit, they could conceivably be happy with anything over 15 top level user requirements. Nineteen in this case would be considered in the happy zone and for this project a magic number. However, if these were the internal system requirements, experience tells them anything less than 200 is a bit short on detail 19 is certainly not magic. If these are specific regional variations to the product anything more than 10 may mean this is a different product, is suffering requirements creep and not just a variant, a little too much magic.

Conclusion

It is important to know what you are measuring and why. You can’t just say a number of requirements is good, bad or insufficient, until you know the context. Setting the parameter limits correctly, for the data you are trying to capture and analyse, is as important as capturing the data itself.

Sometimes these values have to be based on gut feeling. It’s better if they can be based on experience and foundationally more sound if they can be based on measured past experience.  So it’s important to remember, you could have a dashboard show you all green, and your project could still be in a rather brown mire.

We would like you to share your thoughts or experiences on choosing limits, or why nineteen is a magic number. We may include your comments in future updates, so please email social-customer@threesl.com

 

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Work Experience 2019

Work Experience – Introduction

Work Experience is a chance for young people to gain knowledge of what an average working day in a certain place is like. It is also used to demonstrate how to handle the step from school to work.

St. Bernard’s school have recently  sent year 10 on a week’s work experience to various work placements from 11th to the 15th February 2019, one of them being here at 3SL.

The first day , Monday included the introduction to the workplace and what it was about. The product produced is called Cradle, after a brief introduction we were given a Tutorial on how the product functioned. This meant that over the week tasks that included the use of Cradle became easier to do.

The second day required knowledge of Cradle, as the main task was to test functions from the previous update – 7.4 .  One test being shown below;

Testing Example

Test number TC-13644 with pass
Test number TC-13644
for Cradle 7.4 with a pass

Our task was to go through each test and find out if it passed and if not why not , above is an example of one of the tests that was passed.

The third day – Wednesday called for the design of a data set. The task was to present understanding of the way data was represented. The task was done by entering the  stationery into  a database that was started from scratch.

stationary checker for the stationary in 3SL to see how much equipment is used in the office.
Stationary checker for the stationary in 3SL to see how much equipment is used in the office.

The fourth day was specifically for training for later life – CVs and a mock interview. The morning was set for the purpose of writing the CVs as well as this the day was taken up with a design task. The problem was a pretend company needed a more efficient way of packaging their goods. This had to be accomplished without using unnecessary pay and manual labour.  The task –  to come up with the requirements needed to accomplish such an operation.

The second part of the day was used for the mock interview. This was a process that gave an experience of being interviewed for a job. Questions that were more general were added. Subject specific questions , all the questions asked were and example of what might be expected in a real interview.

Design task

design task snapshot
Snap Shot of the design task showing the requirements and the diagrams

The fifth day, Friday, was used to learn about media and it’s effect on company. This was put into effect by the job of writing  about the tasks set during the week of work experience . This was to be posted on 3SL’s website.

At the end of the week , the experience was used to teach about the work environment and what to expect after the jump from school to work.

 

Josh B , Iwan C – St Bernards

click here for St. Bernards twitter  feed

St. Bernards Catholic High School's logo
St. Bernards Catholic High School’s logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 2019 Newsletter

February

Chinese year of the pig 2019
Year of the pig 2019

Welcome to the shortest Gregorian month of the year. Or 新年快乐！3SL 祝愿我们的所有客户，合作伙伴和供应商 2019 吉祥如意！to our Chinese customers  and friends.

However, just because it is a short month, there’s no excuse not to achieve quality work. Whether that be using the ancient Chinese elements of  metal, water, wood, fire, and earth, or modern applications of finance,  medicine, or software, good data management is key.

Same Data Different Views

Using Start Page to simplify
Start Page – Simplification

Managing your project and having everyone using singly centred data makes sure you have control over the project. Too many times we hear that projects have failed because one department or section have been working on one part of a project and have not realised their requirements or data is out of sync with another.  Being smarter with your data in 2019 is a great goal. As a customer you probably already have projects set up in Cradle. However, you may not have all the data related to your project in the central store. There are often a number of reasons that data ends up in disparate pots. Here, we try to offer solutions in some of those scenarios.

 

ScenarioSolution
Some staff shouldn’t alter anything in an item, but do need to see the information.Ownership, Teams / Team hierarchies and Baselines are all used as part of the standard access control to items. Privileges control who can see what.
Not all staff are permitted to see the data associated with an item.Use skills to restrict access to individual frames of information, or whole item types.
Some staff shouldn’t alter categories of an item.Use skills to make appropriate categories Read Only in the UI
The stages of the project are complex. It’s difficult to know where to find what.Building  Project Phases recognises the steps, queries, reports, matrices, actions and so forth that are associated with different periods of the project. Knowing that you are in the development stage and having all the appropriate queries grouped together in the Phase tree makes it easy to find the current work items.
Cradle screens are too complicated for some users who just need to see one aspect of the product.Adding a Start Page which only presents the actions pertinent to a particular user / group of users, can vastly simplify the choices available to the user.
Some users just perform a limited number of tasks against an item. They don’t want huge menu choices.View Commands allow customised menu options for actions on items shown in a query. (combine with a start page for an efficient led guide through your process minimising complexity)
Different tasks require different aspects of an item to be viewed.Whilst Cradle offers many automated views and forms to get you up and running, they are all fully customisable. Try opening the view or form closest to your needs, modifying it and then saving it. These can be saved in ‘folders’ relevant to the user, type of user or for the whole project.
We’re not all in the office but still need to see project information.Web Access  allows worldwide connection to your Cradle project without the need for an installation. Just fire up a browser to gain access.

Social Media

Twitter

Buzz Aldrin 85th Birthday
Happy Birthday Buzz tweet

We were pleased to see what was achieved by engineers 40 years ago landing on the moon. Happy 85th Buzz. What do you think we will achieve this year, that will still be talked about 40 years hence? Let us know on social-customer@threesl.com

 

alternative use of SysML
SysML Use Tweet

We mused at snow falling on 3SL towers, and pondered over the unusual uses of SysML and cheered at #CumbriaDay

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Cumbria Day 2019

Lethera, Sethera, Pimp, Methera, Thethera, Tyan, Yan!

It’s Cumbria Day 2019!

3SL is a la'la bit Cumbrian
La’al bit Cumbrian

Whilst you’ll know the Cumbria and the Lake District is renowned for beautiful scenery and countryside, it’s also home to many great businesses and people.

 

From tourism and regional foods, to high-tech to heavy engineering there’s a great range of opportunities in this fair green land.

3SL a Proud Cumbrian Business

3SL (Structured Software Systems Limited) have been here in Barrow-in-Furness for over 30 years . We are a software producer selling a product that  is used worldwide. The main team is a strong Cumbrian workforce, staff who are subsequently working elsewhere in the UK and Europe are always welcomed back to their home office.

Cumbria Day 2019 logo
Cumbria Day 2019

 

You can checkout more on Twitter with #CumbriaDay.

If you email us a link today, to your Cumbrian business, we’ll try and give you a mention. Watch this space!

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January 2019 Newsletter

January – Looking into 2019

To the Romans ‘Janus’, for which this month is a special celebration, was the guardian god of portals, and gates, the patron of beginnings and endings.

The word appears to have derived from c. 1500, from the  Latin Ianus, meaning “gate, arched passageway,”

The deity is said to have two heads one looking to the past and one looking to the future.

Janus - Looking back - Looking Forward
Janus

So why not make a new year’s resolution to ensure you modernise those remaining projects in your company? Take control and ditch the old, unlinked, discord of separate tools and repositories and ensure all the data is linked and traced in Cradle. From project beginnings to successful endings, from concept to creation and through your product’s life – look forward not backwards with Cradle.

Looking Forward

We’re hard at work implementing features for Cradle 7.5 giving you more ways to get your data in and out of Cradle. Follow our newsletters, blogposts and twitter, facebook and linkedIn pages to stay abreast of the updates coming in 2019.

Cradle Release

If you didn’t get a chance before the Christmas break, make sure you go into the new year with the latest version of Cradle – 7.4.2. This will ensure you have the latest features and the bug tweaks in place.  To answer a common question that support are asked, “Yes you can have the new features included in a 7.4.n release for free if you have a 7.4 code.”

All Spent Up?

Cradle Software As A Service
Cradle SAAS subscription product

Don’t forget if you need a cost effective way to bring Cradle on line for 2019 and have little capital budget left in your 2018/2019 pot…..

Cradle Subscriptions option is a SaaS (Software as a Service) product which is a cost effective way to get up and running with 3SL’s requirements management and systems engineering tool.

There are also different hosting options, for further information see the product announcement.

Social Media

Twitter

Tweet about future of aviation
@AtkinsGlobal tweet

What are the predictions for the future? We liked this tweet from @AtkinsGlobal highlighting the International Air Transport Association @IATA ‘s   vision for the future.

We highlighted how you can have many categories in one field.