February 2019 - 3SL Blog

26th February 201925th August 2022

Is Nineteen a Magic Number?

Nineteen

A Number

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

15th February 2019

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

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

8th February 201925th August 2022

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.

Scenario	Solution
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.

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