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.
Well no one can say it hasn’t been an interesting month for politics. To start our November 2020 newsletter, we offer congratulations to Joe Biden, expected to be confirmed as the President-Elect of the United States.
Polls and votes are a method of gathering opinion. A consensus or agreement may be in a majority, or unanimous. Just as there is undeniably more than one way to run a country, there is usually more than one way to solve a requirement. Configuration management is a method of recording the status of a project at a particular point in time. This could be a simple snapshot, but is more meaningful if there is a recorded agreement between stakeholders that a consensus was also reached. We term this a review, and you can read about why they are important in our article The Value of Reviews.
Cradle Review Options
Cradle reviews follow a workflow for each item type. That workflow is used to control how an item after a review is allowed to proceed.
It’s unlikely you’d be able to mandate all electorate turn out to vote, and in the same way you can choose how many reviewers must make a decision. You certainly can’t ask all the electorate to vote the same way, and a review must allow you to accept a less than unanimous decision.
The supported options in Cradle are:
Reviewers required for decision –All, Any, Several, Majority, Most Decision method – Unanimous, Any approve, Any reject, Majority, Most.
At the end of September, Structured Software Systems Limited, completed its latest financial year.
Managing director Mark Walker said, “We are pleased to say that this has been our most successful year in 3SL’s 30 year history.”
highlights:
Turnover increased 15%,
Turnover split equally between 3SL here in the UK and our worldwide network of partners
Exports amounted to 67% of turnover
Our new SaaS services amounted to 7.5% of turnover in its first full year
Over 95% of customers renewed their maintenance
Every one of our customer feedback surveys compliments our support as among the best in the industry, both for responsiveness and depth of knowledge
We would like to thank all of our customers, both those new to 3SL and those we have been serving for 20 or more years. We continue to work to help you all to derive maximal benefit from Cradle!
Public Training Courses
Whilst 2020’s courses were all online, we will begin to look ahead to 2021’s public courses and offer as appropriate online or training room based sessions.
Public training options are ideal if only a few people in your organisation need to be introduced to a Cradle topic. It also allow you to share the experience with other users and there’s always the benefit that they may ask a question you’d not thought about!
Whether it is Requirements Management, or Systems Engineering, Document Publishing or Loading our training can cover everything “Cradle” and the aspects of RM and SE. Of course we will create bespoke and in depth training for any customer who wishes to tailor training to their company process, however, if there is a topic you would definitely like to see offered in one of our public courses, please drop us a line: salesdetails@threesl.com
Social Media
Twitter
Sloy Power Station
We liked the way that some engineering just keeps on ticking, simple and effective, Loch Sloy Hydro power station can reach full capacity within 5 minutes from a standing start! The SSEHeritage‘s tweet about it celebrates 70 years since inception.
Don’t forget to share you favourite engineering stories with #LoveEngineering
We also tweeted about the flexibility of Cradle definitions remember your tools should work for your business processes and not the other way round.
And Finally
Whether you are commemorating foiling the Guy Fawkes plot or celebrating Thanksgiving this month, operate fireworks safely.
