From concept to creation
2020 was not a year that many of us were expecting or would wish for. Our thoughts to all that have been affected by Covid 19.
Our wishes for a healthier, happier and productive new year.
So raise a glass to – You, Cradle, projects and success. Cheers.
From the staff at 3SL.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We marvelled at how nano layers can shun water with new connectors from @NorthropGrumman
Don’t forget to share your favourite engineering stories with #LoveEngineering
We ‘tried’ to keep quiet about our Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal. We reminded you that #Cradle can be used to perform simple calculations on your item’s data.
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 Management and Model 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’.
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.
We will offer £100** off EACH licence 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.
BFCM2020
“This is Delta Bravo Twoah Oner Niner, ready for Taxi”
“He’s just on his way now. – Going to Paris Avenue or Road is it ‘guv?”[1]
“Call me a Taxi”[2]
“You’re a Taxi”
“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.
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.
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.
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 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.
You can find out more information in Cradle Help
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.”
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!
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.
Our last course for 2020
| 11th-12th November 2020 | Document Publisher | Details |
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
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.
Whether you are commemorating foiling the Guy Fawkes plot or celebrating Thanksgiving this month, operate fireworks safely.
It’s been a challenging year for all. One of the biggest impacts has been in the education sector and we hope all students have now had a month to to settle into a new ‘normal’ as schools, universities and colleges return. Some have found the various lock-downs an opportunity to learn a new skill, study an online course or just get round to reading all those trade and profession journals that appear to mount in our in-boxes.
Learning should never stop, whether in the classroom, online, or as you work from your peers. One of the other vital learning opportunities is from evaluations during and after a project. Call it “Learn from your mistakes” or “Process improvement” the results should be the same; a closed feedback loop is essential. In Cradle you could add a new item type, add a frame to an item or set up a separate evaluations project. The important point is that the data coming out of the discussions and evaluations is recorded and linked to the items giving rise to that feedback. Too often ‘wash-ups’ can be seen as a tick in a management check-box. The lessons can be completely forgotten next time a similar project is undertaken. By recording this information linked to the original project, they can form input to your next design.
Fortuitously, we’ve just mentioned ‘learning’ so its a good time to remind you to book onto one of the #Cradle 2020 Public Training courses
| 21st-22nd October 2020 | Requirements Management | Details |
| 11th-12th November 2020 | Document Publisher | Details |
We’ve held onto the current release Cradle 7.6, mentioned last quarter, in order to complete some performance enhancements. This means these improvements will be released at the same time as the new Risk Management and Test Execution and Recording features.
We could write our own article about security and staying safe online when working at home, but we thought this article by the BCS – (British Computer Society) – said it all!
www.bcs.org/content-hub/how-to-avoid-being-hacked-in-the-era-of-covid-19/
The UK marketplace offers Cloud Software applications and other services, over a wide range of topics to fulfil central and regional government contracts, government agencies’ work and local authority use. Read the full article here.
For full details of Cradle’s facilities follow these links
We looked at the way robotics have been changing and adapting to applications that are not as “standard” and “repeatable” as traditional areas.
We reminded users there are different ways to view your data in lists, tables, trees or document views.
We celebrated the culture of sharing knowledge on #SwapIdeasDay you can still send us your ideas and we may publish them. That’s all for the October 2020 Newsletter.
The UK government Digital Market Place Cloud Software applications offer a wide range of software aimed at fulfilment of central and regional government contracts, government agencies’ work and local authority use. This ranges from Schools, education and libraries to Fault management, monitoring and alerting or Marketing . 3SL (Structured Software Systems Ltd.) are proud to announce that Cradle is available as SaaS through G-Cloud 12 for agile and phase-based projects under the Information and communications technology (ICT) services.
Cradle offers two packages Cradle Software as SaaS and Cradle Training and Consultancy.
The software package includes Cradle licences, a pre-defined schema and a comprehensive support package. This can be used in both unclassified (IL0) and OFFICIAL (certified IL3) deployments and covers the following elements:
Prices start from as little as £73.50 per user per month. Including EMail and phone support and full documentation included. Optional onsite support and training available. This can be supplied on Windows® or Linux®.
A wide range of user customisation is available including:
For details, see here:
or search for Cradle. For an overview of Cradle, see our video here: We look forward to helping you achieve success on your future projects, or migrating existing ‘manual’ or disparate works into a fully encompassed solution.
3SL are pleased to announce the dates for this year’s fourth training course – Document Publisher November 2020 “Once you have managed your requirements and development, producing a comprehensive report automatically based directly on the project data, provides an essential deliverable”
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.
Often the document production task is run by an individual or a very small team. 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 or online at a date and time to suit See here.
| Date | Subject | Venue | Cost | Pre-Requisites | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11th-12th November 2020 | Document Publisher | Online learning tutored course. | £475+VAT | 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 November 2020, please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
All courses are available for direct purchase online.
3SL are pleased to announce the dates for this year’s third training course – Requirements Management October 2020
“A great opportunity for small teams, or a couple of new team members to get started with RM and Cradle”
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 and are ideal for getting a team up and running.
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.
| Date | Subject | Venue | Cost | Pre-Requisites | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21st-22nd October 2020 | Requirements Management | Online learning tutored course. | £475+VAT | 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 October 2020, please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
All courses are available for direct purchase online.
Continue reading “Public Online Training Course – Requirements Management October 2020”
Swap Ideas Day 10th September 2020 is all about sharing your thoughts and ideas. This could be with colleagues, friends or working partners. However, it may even be that you have a great idea, that does not quite fit into your industry – so why not post it and share it with others? It could be the spark of something beautiful.
If you have a great idea and want to share it you could tweet us @threesl or you could email us at social-customer@threesl.com. If we like it we may update this post and list it, so be sure to include your company contact details if you want them included.
Companies that are involved in design, production, through or end-life support should have a documented way to communicate ideas. Sometimes it is easy to miss the obvious, be blinkered by “that’s the way we have always done it” or get stuck without the vision of how to see ‘outside the box’.
Whatever you want to call them these are intended to encourage imagination and creativity. To spark conversation, to record thoughts and to gather ideas. This is the most common point to share.
A formal or informally conducted critique or consideration of a piece of work. This may be with colleagues, customers and/or other stakeholders. It’s aim is to promote comments and question, and thereby to ensure involved are happy with the development at this point in time. The depth of the review will depend on the stage in the lifecycle and the criticality of the decisions and potential negative impacts if the work is not correct. It can range from a cursory glance at an email to ensure all the facts brought up in a discussion have been covered, to a minute atomic step through Fagan Inspection.
As a product moves through the cycle there may be a need to react to new requirements or changes in project constraints. This could be the results of another review, a technology demonstration, test measurements or supplier issues, which can also lead to a need to change. To prevent a loss of control, this must be a considered and documented process. This could range from a simple agreement by email, or a formal request and review board approval.
There always needs to be a way to react to changes, new ideas, issues raised by the user or customer. These may be positive “what if” or “could we also” or negative “it doesn’t” or “it really should”. However these arrive, as emails, comments on a social media platform, user feedback sessions, or questionnaires, our process should allow the feedback loop to feed back into the design cycle for consideration.
You’ll no doubt have heard us mention the need to make sure you have the ‘right tools for the job‘ a number of times. So it will be no surprise that we have made sure Cradle supports these idea stages.
Create an item type that records any meetings you have. You can assign frames to hold images, documents or any other binary data you like. Add some categories with values such as “Status” with values “Candidate” “Dismissed” “Future“. Add a Group or additional category to collect similar topics.
User definable workflows allow reviews to be a simple recording mechanism with one approver, or to require majority, unanimous etc. decisions. This gives full traceability of the decisions and when and who made them.
Cradle supports formal Change Requests CHRs and Change Tasks CHTs. Which, combined with the review mechanism and workflows, allow you to ensure alterations follow you process and procedures.
Discussions are an ideal way to add comments to any item in the Cradle database. They can be agreed / dismissed and follow a conversational thread style.
If we receive any ideas they will be updated on our blog post here: