Tag: Cradle

Cradle from 3SL, is a tool to load, create, inter-link and publish information for all stages in a systems engineering project using agile, iterative or phase-based approaches and using any process.

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Cradle Modules – PDM

The Cradle PDM module provides the infrastructure for all other Cradle modules. Its scalability and flexibility create an industrial strength, proven, shared data environment for even the largest projects:

Cradle PDM Module
Cradle PDM Module

Databases

Cradle supports any number of databases, each with its own schema, CM system and users. Each database supports many projects. Use the Project Manager tool to organise this environment by user-defined criteria, for example as hierarchies.

Each database stores any number of items, of any number of types (requirements, risks, classes, user stories, functions) defined by a UI. Items have any number of attributes, each of a user-defined type, that manage up to 1 TByte of any type of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in external files, URLs or another tool or environment.

Calculations

User-defined calculations are supported in all parts of Cradle and can be displayed as graphs, in views and user-defined reports. User-defined rules can be applied to automatically set attribute values or perform calculations, to maintain the integrity within and between items.

Cross References

Items can be cross referenced, with optional user-defined link types and groups. Links have user-defined attributes to justify, parametrise, explain or characterise them. You control which links are used to navigate or report traceability, based on link type or group, direction and link attribute values. Links are both direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

Process Tailored Environment

You use start pages and a phase hierarchy to build an environment tailored to your process. End users only need to be trained in your interface, reducing training time and costs:

  • Start pages are text and graphics controls that perform your choice of operations simply and easily
  • The phase hierarchy shows the process as a hierarchy in which an agile or phase activity, task, sprint, report or document is run by a mouse click. Different parts of the phase hierarchy can be shown to each user or stakeholder group.

Traceability and coverage views are available as trees, nested and pivot tables, matrices and Hierarchy Diagrams. Unique transitive links give traceability across the full system lifecycle.

Configuration Management

Items evolve through versions that are managed in baselines and controlled by a built-in CM system, with mechanisms for review, baseline and version control, full change control, and audit trails.

Cradle can track all changes. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Items can be compared across edits and in baselines. Edits can raise alerts to users, and mark related items as suspect. All edits are permanently available, for change logs.

Adaptations

Cradle provides adaptations to allow variants of items. This mechanism is ideal for databases that contain a library of standard items and projects that use the library, and contribute to it.

Access Controls

Access controls apply to all items based on user roles, privileges, security clearances and skills. Users can be grouped in a hierarchy of teams, to create any access control scheme, such as for customers, subcontractors and IV&V. The creation and manipulation of links can be controlled, by item or user.

Cradle is multi-user. It locks information at item level, with automatic database commit after an edit. This maximises users’ interaction with the database and guarantees all data s up-to-date.

Alerts

Cradle’s alert mechanism sends messages by email (SMTP or IMAP), Cradle or both. Alerts can be selectively enabled and disabled. Alerts track events on items, including edit, review and formal change.

Discussions

The Cradle discussion mechanism allows even read-only users to add comments to items. Four other commenting mechanisms are provided.

Project Planning

Cradle can manage project plans and WBS. User task lists are maintained. WBS structures and progress data can be exchanged bidirectionally with external PM tools. Cradle can generate burn-down and earned-value graphs on any user-defined criterion to monitor progress.

API

Cradle is open and extensible. It provides multiple import/export formats, an API, a user-definable event-driven command interface, interfaces with other tools and bidirectional interfaces to Microsoft Office.

Query and Report Data

Cradle provides uniquely powerful data query and visualisation facilities. Each user’s environment can be tailored by defining custom queries, views, forms, navigations, matrices, reports and other facilities. All customisations have a scope, to be specific to the end user, or shared with other users of the same type (such as all customers or all managers), the user’s team, the entire project, or all projects.

Any desired compliance, coverage or traceability report can be created quickly/easily using Cradle’s queries, multi-row views/nested table view, and saved for later use.

Licensing

Cradle has floating, dynamic licensing and low cost read-only users. Open and named user licences are available. Everything described here is free of charge.

Licences, databases and schemas are interchangeable across Linux and Windows 8.1, 10, 11, Server 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019.

Optional support for Oracle and MySQL.

Feature Summary

Feature Summary - PDM
Feature Summary – PDM

Please contact 3SL for further information about Cradle PDM licences.

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Cradle Modules – Overview

Cradle Modules

Cradle is an integrated requirements management and systems engineering environment with the features, flexibility and scalability for the full lifecycle of today’s complex agile and phase-based projects.

Overview of Cradle Modules
Overview of Cradle Modules

From concept to creation, from Cradle to grave.

Cradle is unique. It provides the tools and features to create and manage all your data, at all stages in your systems development, and at all levels. By managing all the data in one place, only Cradle can provide traceability across the entire lifecycle in one tool. Without Cradle, you have to assemble many products from many vendors, and you will still not have the full traceability that Cradle can provide.

What does Cradle Provide?

Cradle provides full requirements management, analysis, design, architecture and performance modelling, test, risk and interface management and metrics in one product. You can use all of these facilities, or combine Cradle with tools from other vendors. If you have such tools then Cradle will link to them, extending their scope from a part of the system lifecycle to all of it.

Cradle is multi-user, multi-project, distributed, open and extensible. It links to your existing desktop tools to create a tailored environment to suit your process.

Cradle provides built-in issue, risk and interface management. It supports comparative trade studies and analyses. Cradle provides a built-in  configuration management and control system with baselines, version control, change histories and formal change control. It bidirectionally links a WBS and progress reporting to your project planning tool. With these capabilities,  Cradle removes the need for you to try to connect risk, CM or change tracking tools to your systems engineering. Cradle provides everything you need, integrated and ready to use.

Access Control and Authentication

Cradle has customisable, hierarchical, access control facilities and integrates with your authentication, access control and security mechanisms including firewalls, LDAP and SSL. Cradle provides user-definable views of project data, tailored to each stakeholder group. With customisable navigation, review and entry tools and tailored web UIs, Cradle shows each user the data that they want to see, in the way that they want to see it.

Cradle Databases

Projects use user-defined, arbitrarily extensible databases, linked to external files, URL resources and data in external repositories. Each database is configuration controlled, with change histories, baselines, versions and variants, managed by configurable change requests and change tasks.

Cradle Access

Cradle supports off-line and remote access from geographically separate groups. Internet and VPN access is provided, with full support for project and company firewalls and DMZs.

It connects dispersed teams together, with tailorable discussions, alerts and e-mail.

Cradle Modules Overview

Cradle is modular, using floating licences to share resources dynamically across the project. The Cradle modules overview is:

  • Cradle-PDM provides a project infrastructure, from access control and user accounts, through a user-defined schema, phase hierarchy, team hierarchy and access controls to configuration management and open external interfaces.
  • Cradle-REQ provides requirements management from external source documents to baselined, engineered requirements linked to the rest of the system lifecycle. It allows you to define and manage user stories, validations, test cases, and any other types of information for all of your process.
  • Cradle-MET provides user-definable metrics to gather and analyse statistics from project data.
  • Cradle-SYS is a flexible analysis and design modelling environment. It allows any number of models to be built and grouped into model hierarchies in distinct analysis and design domains. Models are fully cross referenced to requirements and all other information. SysML is also supported.
  • Cradle-DASH provides user-definable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) calculated from live project data in user-defined dashboards shown as tables or dials.
  • Cradle-PERF provides performance assessment, budget apportionment and data aggregation facilities for design models at any level in a system development.
  • Cradle-SWE provides code generation and reverse engineering for C, Ada and Pascal, to synchronise design and source code.
  • Cradle-DOC provides user-defined project document generation and a formal document register of project deliverables.
  • Cradle-WEBP provides web publishing of project data to static, hyperlinked, websites for external stakeholders.
  • Cradle-WEBA allows read-only and read-write access to project data through multiple, user-defined, web UIs that are tailored to each stakeholder group. It also provides external access to Cradle items through URLs.
  • Cradle-RISK provides ability to open and edit items of the mapped item type for risks. Also allows you to create and open risk profile graphs.
  • Cradle-TEST provides ability to execute test plans and create/edit test information, e.g. test cases, test results and test runs.

Feature Summary

Feature Summary - Overview
Feature Summary – Overview

Please contact 3SL for further information about adding any of the Cradle modules to your existing system.

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Product Range – Cradle Enterprise

Cradle Enterprise Overview

Collaborative Model Based Systems Engineering across the Systems Lifecycle

Complete Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and documentation solution for the entire project lifecycle, fully user-definable and applicable to all agile and phase based processes.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Full traceability of data from external sources and version management of source documents
  • Full traceability and coverage analyses
  • User-definable views of data including tables, trees, documents, matrices, diagrams and graphs
  • User-defined metrics and management dashboards

Cradle Enterprise is a complete multi-user solution to manage, trace and document all the data for your agile and phase-based projects.

Capture and Track Information

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes in these sources. You can build new sets of requirements, analysis, architecture and design models, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the consistency and quality of this information, and prove the integrity of the models and other data with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Create Databases and Information

Create any number of databases, each with a schema and multiple projects that contain any number of items of any number of user-defined item types. Each item has any number of attributes with up to 1TByte of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in files, URLs or other tools.

All items can be linked with user-defined types of cross reference. The links have attributes to justify, explain or parametise them. Links are direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

External documents can be loaded into hierarchies of items. Every item in Cradle is linked to its source in a document. Changes in new document versions are automatically found and the database updated. You can prove the integrity of all source data to your customers with a range of detailed coverage analyses of their documents.

Items can be linear, hierarchical and in many-to-many relationships. Items can be split, merged and reordered. All information can be shared and reused. Cradle can support product ranges, models, variants and builds, and generate comparative analyses between them as tables, pivot tables and matrices.

Create any number of analysis, logical, process, architecture or design models in SysML, UML, SASD, IDEF, ADARTS and other notations. Optionally group models in hierarchies and link elements of all models to requirements, SBS, issues, test cases and all other information.

Track and View Information

Cradle tracks all edits to every requirement, test case, verification and all other information that you want it to hold. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Full or partial change logs are readily available.

Control the work with team hierarchies, roles and access controls. Review items with discussions, user-defined workflows and built-in CM with baselines, full version control and formal change management.

You define how information is viewed and reported in any number of views, shown as nested tables, trees, matrices, pivot tables and as diagrams.

Generate versions of documents such as a URD, SRD, IRS, SDS and SSDS to match your or your client’s formats with user-defined templates and detailed traceability of which items were published in each document issue.

Manage Projects

Manage your projects with:

  • Metrics, user-defined calculations of items’ values
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results of metric calculations with colour-coded display bands
  • Bi-directional links to Project, including user task lists and actual progress reporting

Cradle is open. It supports many import/export formats, has several interface mechanisms to link to other tools, and connects to Microsoft Office components Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project.

Cradle is simple to customise and use through point-and-click UIs.

Major Features

The major features are:

Cradle Enterprise Features
Cradle Enterprise Features

Supported Platforms

The supported platforms are:

Supported Platforms

Characteristics

The characteristics are:

Cradle Enterprise Characteristics
Cradle Enterprise Characteristics

Cradle Enterprise is part of the Cradle product range that includes low cost, single-user tools.

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Modelling / MBSE
  • Test execution / risk management
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V and compliance management
  • Reporting / document publishing
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • User-defined UIs
  • Custom web UIs
  • Configuration management
  • Multi user
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Product Range – Cradle-SE Pro

Cradle-SE Pro Overview

Model Based Systems Engineering across the Systems Lifecycle

Complete Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and documentation solution for the entire project lifecycle, fully user-definable and applicable to all agile and phase based processes.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, models, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Full traceability of data to source and generated documents with complete version management
  • Full traceability and coverage analyses
  • User-definable views of data including tables, trees, documents, matrices, diagrams and graphs
  • User-defined metrics and management dashboards

Cradle-SE Pro is a complete solution to manage, trace and document all the data for your agile and phase-based projects.

Capture and Track Information

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes in these sources. You can build new sets of requirements, analysis, architecture and design models, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the consistency and quality of this information, and prove the integrity of the models and other data with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Create Databases and Information

Create any number of databases, each with a schema and multiple projects that contain any number of items of any number of user-defined item types. Each item has any number of attributes with up to 1TByte of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in files, URLs or other tools.

All items can be linked with user-defined types of cross reference. The links have attributes to justify, explain or parametise them. Links are direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

External documents can be loaded into hierarchies of items. Every item in Cradle is linked to its source in a document. Changes in new document versions are automatically found and the database updated. You can prove the integrity of all source data to your customers with a range of detailed coverage analyses of their documents.

Items can be linear, hierarchical and in many-to-many relationships. Items can be split, merged and reordered. All information can be shared and reused. Cradle can support product ranges, models, variants and builds, and generate comparative analyses between them as tables, pivot tables and matrices.

Create any number of analysis, architecture, logical, process or design models using UML, SASD, IDEF, ADARTS, SysML and other notations. Group models in hierarchies and link all elements of all models to requirements, SBS, issues, test cases and all other information.

Track and View Information

Cradle tracks all edits to every requirement, test case, verification and all other information that you want it to hold. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Full or partial change logs are readily available.

You define how information is viewed and reported in any number of views, shown as nested tables, trees, matrices, pivot tables and as diagrams.

Generate versions of documents such as URD, SRD, IRS, SDS and SSDS to match your or your client’s formats with user-defined templates and detailed traceability of which items were published in each document issue.

Manage Projects

Manage your projects with:

  • Metrics, user-defined calculations of items’ values
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results of metric calculations with colour-coded display bands
  • Bi-directional links to Project, including user task lists and actual progress reporting

Cradle is open. It supports many import/export formats, has several interface mechanisms to link to other tools, and connects to Microsoft Office components Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project.

Cradle is simple to customise and use. You do not need to learn a scripting language or become a programmer to tailor it to your process. After every change to your schema, Cradle will automatically update collections of queries, views and other definitions that make you productive immediately.

Major Features

The major features are:

Cradle-SE Pro Features
Cradle-SE Pro Features

Supported Platforms

The supported platforms are:

Supported Platforms

Characteristics

The characteristics are:

Cradle-SE Pro Characteristics
Cradle-SE Pro Characteristics

Cradle-SE Pro is part of the Cradle product range. The full, multi-user, product is Cradle Enterprise.

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Modelling / MBSE
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V
  • Reporting
  • Document publishing
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • Compliance management
  • Single user
Posted on

Product Range – Cradle-SE Desktop

Cradle-SE Desktop Overview

Model Based Systems Engineering across the Systems Lifecycle

Complete Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) solution for the entire project lifecycle, fully user-definable and applicable to all agile and phase based processes.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, models, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Full traceability of data from external sources and version management of source documents
  • Full traceability and coverage analyses
  • User-definable views of data including tables, trees, documents, matrices, diagrams and graphs
  • User-defined metrics and management dashboards

Cradle-SE Desktop is a complete solution to manage and trace all the data for your agile and phase-based projects.

Capture and Track Information

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes in these sources. You can build new sets of requirements, analysis, architecture and design models, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the consistency and quality of this information, and prove the integrity of the models and other data with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Create Databases and Information

Create any number of databases, each with a schema and multiple projects that contain any number of items of any number of user-defined item types. Each item has any number of attributes with up to 1TByte of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in files, URLs or other tools.

All items can be linked with user-defined types of cross reference. The links have attributes to justify, explain or parametise them. Links are direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

External documents can be loaded into hierarchies of items. Every item in Cradle is linked to its source in a document. Changes in new document versions are automatically found and the database updated. You can prove the integrity of all source data to your customers with a range of detailed coverage analyses of their documents.

Items can be linear, hierarchical and in many-to-many relationships. Items can be split, merged and reordered. All information can be shared and reused. Cradle can support product ranges, models, variants and builds, and generate comparative analyses between them as tables, pivot tables and matrices.

Create any number of analysis, process, architecture and design models using UML, SASD, IDEF, ADARTS, SysML and other notations. Group models in hierarchies and link all elements of all models to requirements, SBS, issues, test cases and all other information.

Track and View Information

Cradle tracks all edits to every requirement, test case, verification and all other information that you want it to hold. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Full or partial change logs are readily available.

You define how information is viewed and reported in any number of views, shown as nested tables, trees, matrices, pivot tables and as diagrams.

Manage Projects

Manage your projects with:

  • Metrics, user-defined calculations of items’ values
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results of metric calculations with colour-coded display bands
  • Bi-directional links to Project, including user task lists and actual progress reporting

Cradle is open. It supports many import/export formats, has several interface mechanisms to link to other tools, and connects to Microsoft Office components Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project.

Cradle is simple to customise and use. You do not need to learn a scripting language or become a programmer to tailor it to your process. After every change to your schema, Cradle will automatically update collections of queries, views and other definitions that make you productive immediately.

Major Features

The major features are:

Cradle-SE Desktop Features
Cradle-SE Desktop Features

Supported Platforms

The supported platforms are:

Supported Platforms

Characteristics

The characteristics are:

Cradle-SE Desktop Characteristics
Cradle-SE Desktop Characteristics

Cradle-SE Desktop is part of the Cradle product range. The full, multi-user, product is Cradle Enterprise.

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Modelling / MBSE
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V
  • Reporting
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • Compliance management
  • Single user
Posted on

Product Range – Cradle-RM Pro

Cradle-RM Pro Overview

Requirements Management across the Systems Lifecycle

Complete Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Requirements Management (RM) and documentation solution for the entire project lifecycle, fully user-definable and applicable to all agile and phase based processes.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Full traceability of data to source and generated documents with complete version management
  • Full traceability and coverage analyses
  • User-definable views of data including tables, trees, documents, matrices, diagrams and graphs
  • User-defined metrics and management dashboards

Cradle-RM Pro is a complete solution to manage, trace and document all the data for your agile and phase-based projects.

Capture and Track Information

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes in these sources. You can build new sets of requirements, functions, components, interfaces, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the quality and structure of this information, and prove the integrity of information with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Create Databases and Information

Create any number of databases, each with a schema and multiple projects that contain any number of items of any number of user-defined item types. Each item has any number of attributes with up to 1TByte of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in files, URLs or other tools.

All items can be linked with user-defined types of cross reference. The links have attributes to justify, explain or parametise them. Links are direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

External documents can be loaded into hierarchies of items. Every item in Cradle is linked to its source in a document. Changes in new document versions are automatically found and the database updated. You can prove the integrity of all source data to your customers with a range of detailed coverage analyses of their documents.

Items can be linear, hierarchical and in many-to-many relationships. Items can be split, merged and reordered. All information can be shared and reused. Cradle can support product ranges, models, variants and builds, and generate comparative analyses between them as tables, pivot tables and matrices.

Track and View Information

Cradle tracks all edits to every requirement, test case, verification and all other information that you want it to hold. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Full or partial change logs are readily available.

You define how information is viewed and reported in any number of views, shown as nested tables, trees, matrices, pivot tables and as diagrams.

Generate versions of documents such as a URD, SRD, IRS, SDS and SSDS to match your or your client’s formats with user-defined templates and detailed traceability of which items were published in each document issue.

Manage Projects

Manage your projects with:

  • Metrics, user-defined calculations of items’ values
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results of metric calculations with colour-coded display bands
  • Bi-directional links to Project, including user task lists and actual progress reporting

Cradle is open. It supports many import/export formats, has several interface mechanisms to link to other tools, and connects to Microsoft Office components Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project.

Cradle is simple to customise and use. You do not need to learn a scripting language or become a programmer to tailor it to your process. After every change to your schema, Cradle will automatically update collections of queries, views and other definitions that make you productive immediately.

Major Features

The major features are:

Cradle-RM Pro Features
Cradle-RM Pro Features

Supported Platforms

The supported platforms are:

Supported Platforms

Characteristics

The characteristics are:

Cradle-RM Pro Characteristics
Cradle-RM Pro Characteristics

Cradle-RM Pro is part of the Cradle product range. The full, multi-user, product is Cradle Enterprise.

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V
  • Reporting
  • Document publishing
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • Compliance management
  • Single user
Posted on

Product Range – Cradle-RM Desktop

Cradle-RM Desktop Overview

Requirements Management across the Systems Lifecycle

Complete Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Requirements Management (RM) solution for the entire project lifecycle, fully user-definable and applicable to all agile and phase based processes.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Full traceability of data from external sources and version management of source documents
  • Full traceability and coverage analyses
  • User-definable views of data including tables, trees, documents, matrices, diagrams and graphs
  • User-defined metrics and management dashboards

Cradle-RM Desktop is a complete solution to manage and trace all the data for your agile and phase-based projects.

Capture and Track Information

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes in these sources. You can build new sets of requirements, functions, components, interfaces, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the quality and structure of this information, and prove the integrity of information with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Create Databases and Information

Create any number of databases, each with a schema and multiple projects that contain any number of items of any number of user-defined item types. Each item has any number of attributes with up to 1TByte of data, held in Cradle, or referenced in files, URLs or other tools.

All items can be linked with user-defined types of cross reference. The links have attributes to justify, explain or parametise them. Links are direct and indirect, for full lifecycle traceability, impact and coverage analyses.

External documents can be loaded into hierarchies of items. Every item in Cradle is linked to its source in a document. Changes in new document versions are automatically found and the database updated. You can prove the integrity of all source data to your customers with a range of detailed coverage analyses of their documents.

Items can be linear, hierarchical and in many-to-many relationships. Items can be split, merged and reordered. All information can be shared and reused. Cradle can support product ranges, models, variants and builds, and generate comparative analyses between them as tables, pivot tables and matrices.

Track and View Information

Cradle tracks all edits to every requirement, test case, verification and all other information that you want it to hold. Edits can be reversed selectively or by group. Full or partial change logs are readily available.

You define how information is viewed and reported in any number of views, shown as nested tables, trees, matrices, pivot tables and as diagrams.

Manage Projects

Manage your projects with:

  • Metrics, user-defined calculations of items’ values
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), results of metric calculations with colour-coded display bands
  • Bi-directional links to Project, including user task lists and actual progress reporting

Cradle is open. It supports many import/export formats, has several interface mechanisms to link to other tools, and connects to Microsoft Office components Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Project.

Cradle is simple to customise and use. You do not need to learn a scripting language or become a programmer to tailor it to your process. After every change to your schema, Cradle will automatically update collections of queries, views and other definitions that make you productive immediately.

Major Features

The major features are:
Cradle RM Desktop Features

Supported Platforms

The supported platforms are:

Supported Platforms

Characteristics

The characteristics are:

Cradle RM Desktop Characteristics
Cradle RM Desktop Characteristics

Cradle-RM Desktop is part of the Cradle product range. The full, multi-user, product is Cradle Enterprise.

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V
  • Reporting
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • Compliance management
  • Single user
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Cradle Product Range

Cradle Product Range Overview

Integrated Systems Engineering from the Desktop to the Enterprise

Manage all information for the entire lifecycle with full traceability, metrics, quality checks  and performance indicators, all linked to your project schedules.

  • Supports the full systems development lifecycle at system, subsystem and lower levels
  • Integrates in one product features normally spread across separate tools from different vendors
  • Completely user-definable and user-extensible with point-and-click UIs
  • Manage any information, including requirements, models, risks, interfaces, tests and verifications
  • Built-in CM, baselines, formal change control and user-defined workflows
  • Scalable to millions of items of information
  • Scalable from one to thousands of users
  • Web and desktop applications, user-definable UIs
  • Rapid deployment facilities
  • Embed process in tool UIs, minimised user training

Cradle is a complete multi-user solution to manage, trace and document all data in your agile, and phase-based projects.

Capture information from external documents and tools, and track changes. You can build new sets of requirements, analysis, architecture and design models, tests or verifications, and link them to the source data and to each other. Check the consistency and quality of this information, and prove the integrity of the models and other data with bi-directional coverage and traceability analyses.

Customers’ confidence can be raised with proof that your work satisfies its sources and constraints, and will meet their needs.

Easily track progress with metrics and KPIs and link to your WBS and actual progress to your project planning tools.

Manage users’ work with user-defined CM, workflows and access controls, and multi-team collaboration and discussions.

Cradle is a complete product range, from single-user requirements management to enterprise scale, multi-user collaborative environments. All are fully compatible with each other, sharing their architecture, database and I/O formats. You can start with a single-user tool and migrate to the multi-user Cradle Enterprise product, seamlessly and easily.

What does Cradle Include and Support?

All Cradle systems include:

  • Introductory overview
  • Tutorial, to teach the UI
  • Start Page of shortcuts in the UI for new users
  • A guide for creating and working in a new project
  • Example configurations suitable for many different processes, each with its own process guide
  • A range of user guides
  • Fully indexed, searchable help

Cradle supports all variants of Windows and Linux. Different platforms can be mixed in a Cradle deployment. Cradle servers are designed to run 24×7, unattended, and need no administration. No routine upkeep is needed.

Virtual servers and clients are supported. Supports IPv4 and IPv6. Cradle may be served as SaaS using all popular web and non-web remote deployment tools. Can be served through firewalls and from DMZs.

Includes access, security and licence usage logs, and a range of management reporting tools.

Supported Platforms

Supported Platforms
Supported Platforms

Deployment

Cradle systems are installed on your computers. Cradle is also available as SaaS in a subscription where you choose the features required, the number of users to be supported, and how long you want to use Cradle.

Product Characteristics and Features

The characteristics and features of all Cradle products are shown below:

Product Range Overview - Characteristics and Features
Product Characteristics and Features

Product Range Highlights

  • Applies to agile and phase projects
  • Application lifecycle management
  • Requirements management
  • Modelling / MBSE / SysML / UML
  • Test Execution / Risk Management
  • Full lifecycle integration
  • V&V
  • Reporting / document publishing
  • Metrics
  • Dashboards
  • Project plans
  • User-defined UIs
  • Custom web UIs
  • Configuration management
  • Single user and multi-user
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Hiding Unused Item Types

Each Cradle project contains item types that can be linked together by cross references:

  • You define the types of items, their characteristics and their attributes
  • You define the types of cross references and their attributes, and the rules by which they link items

There are several item types that are included by default in Cradle, such as:

  • Source documents – captured using Document Loader
  • Formal documents– formal saved Document Publisher output
  • Requirements – standard requirement type that you might wish to replace with a system note type instead
  • Events – used in the analysis stage of a project to model the environment of a system and to describe how the system interacts with this environment
  • Essential Domain – analysis models
  • Implementation Domain – design models
  • Project plans – integration with Microsoft Project
    Items shown in interface
    Before hiding unused item types

    Some of the item types might not be necessary in your schema so you can remove unused item types/information in the Miscellaneous section of Project Setup:

    Hide option in Project Setup
    Setting item types to be hidden

Once applied and WorkBench restarted, you will no longer see the item types/information you have chosen to hide. This includes:

  • Project sidebar nodes
  • Sidebars
  • Menus
  • Item type chooser
  • Query, View and Form Details dialogs

    Items hidden from user interface
    After hiding unused item types

This also applies to the Web Access default and basic user interfaces.

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April Newsletter 2023

Welcome to the April 2023 newsletter from 3SL!

This newsletter contains a mixture of news and technical information about us, and our requirements management and systems engineering tool “Cradle”. We would especially like to welcome everyone who has purchased Cradle in the past month and those who are currently evaluating Cradle for their projects and processes.

We hope that 3SL and Cradle can deliver real and measurable benefits that help you to improve the information flow within, the quality and timeliness of, and the traceability, compliance and governance for, all of your current and future projects.

If you have any questions about your use of Cradle, please do not hesitate to contact 3SL Support.

Is SaaS Beneficial?

Traditionally, software was installed on in-house computers. You managed the hardware that ran the software, ensured the integrity of the data created with the software with appropriate backups, and applied all the operating system and firmware updates needed to keep the system running properly.

Increasingly, individuals and companies simply want to use software, and have someone else host it, ensure the integrity of the data that they create, and manage the resilience of the underlying hardware and software infrastructure.

This is SaaS – software as a service.

Most large software companies try hard to force all customers to use SaaS by buying subscriptions. For example, although it is possible to buy Microsoft and Adobe products to install in-house, you have to work hard to find the part of their websites where such purchases can be made.

SaaS is charged on a per user per month basis for the functionality used. You pay more as you add users and as you access more functionality. You can stop the service when access to the software will be removed, all your data will be deleted, and you will stop being charged. This is all reasonable.

Some SaaS Benefits

SaaS brings benefits including:

  • You do not need to provide resources (hardware or VMs) to run the software
  • You do not have to maintain these resources nor provide the staff to perform this maintenance
  • You can easily react to short term needs
  • You do not need to provide integrity for the data that is created
  • You do not have any costs if you don’t need the resource for a while

Problems with SaaS

Of course there are also disadvantages to SaaS:

  • It will be more expensive than deploying in-house, typically after 2 years
  • You have no direct access, so you are reliant on your SaaS provider being responsive and complying with the SLA – you do have a Service Level Agreement don’t you?
  • You cannot directly interact with the software and must rely on the SaaS provider’s competence with the software and their understanding of what you want to achieve. This could cause delays or errors.
  • You do not have physical control over your data or the hardware that hosts it
  • Your data may be exposed by being given to third parties without your knowledge or consent, given such as the US Patriot Act (parts of which are still in effect) and the collaboration between groups including the EU and 5 Eyes – this includes all data centres managed by US companies regardless of their location, so be mindful when considering US-owned Infrastructure as a Service such as, but not only, Azure and AWS
  • You have to manage the IP ranges that are to have access, unless your SaaS allows access by the entire Internet

Is a Cradle SaaS Worth It?

This depends on your situation. In general:

  • if you do not have an IT organisation, or
  • if Cradle is too small to be applicable to your IT organisation

and:

  • if you are confident that 3SL understands Cradle and will be responsive to your needs and
  • if the SLA and Cradle SaaS are acceptable (see the 3SL Cradle End User SaaS Agreement – EUSA), and
  • you have agreed a location for your data (within 3SL or in a SaaS Virtual Private Cloud – VPC – that 3SL will build for you in an agreed location)

then, yes, SaaS is a good solution as it allows you to concentrate on using Cradle to the benefit of your projects and leaves the management of the Cradle infrastructure to others.

Fixed IPs for Cradle SaaS

We do not want a Cradle SaaS to be accessible by the entire Internet. Each Cradle SaaS includes an external firewall that specifies the IP addresses or ranges (CIDRs) of the locations that are allowed access. Access from any IP address is ignored if it is not in this list of allowed locations.

This method works well except when a user’s IP address is not fixed. A user’s IP address is not fixed if they access the SaaS from either:

  • many locations, such as customer sites, hotel rooms, train stations, public tea rooms, or
  • a domestic Internet connection where the ISP assigns a different IP address to the user every time that they connect to the Internet

In these cases, 3SL will consider the size of the IP address range. A small IP address range may be acceptable to both you and 3SL. For example, the CIDR:

78.37.252.0/22

is a range of 1,024 IP addresses 78.37.252.0 to 78.37.255.255 inclusive. In general, 3SL will not accept CIDRs of more than 64 addresses.

The solution to this problem is to have a fixed IP address.

Fixed IP Addresses and VPNs

If the end user’s location is not fixed or does not have a fixed IP address, they can get a fixed IP address by:

  1. An organisation may provide a VPN. If so, then route the user’s connection to the Cradle SaaS over this VPN. This has two advantages. First, the connection from the end user’s computer is encrypted by the VPN, so it can be used safely from highly insecure locations such as tea shops or hotel rooms. Second, the connection to the SaaS will be from the organisation’s fixed external IP address. This is transparent to the end user. The end user simply starts the VPN as they will for all company work, and then connect to the Cradle SaaS.
  2. A fixed IP address can be purchased from a range of providers, such as are listed here
  3. For an extra fee, 3SL can provide a reverse proxy server that provides a VPN. The end user connects this VPN using authentication details from 3SL, typically a certificate issued by 3SL. The connection to the Cradle SaaS will come from the reverse proxy server, which has a fixed IP address. This method is also secure as it uses an encrypted VPN connection, and so it is safe to use from insecure locations.

Happy Easter

Easter, also called Pascha or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday.

We would like to wish all our customers, prospects, distributors and suppliers a Happy Easter:

3SL Easter Eggs
3SL Easter

St George’s Day

Saint George’s Day is the feast day of Saint George, celebrated by Christian churches, countries, and cities of which he is the patron saint:

Depicting the legend of St George in an ACD
St. George as a UML Activity Diagram (ACD)

If you ever want a reminder of the legend of St. George the diagram above may be handy. For more information see the Cradle help section for ACD

We would like to wish all our customers, prospects, distributors and suppliers a Happy Saint George’s Day.

World Autism Acceptance Week

World Autism Acceptance Week is on Monday 27th March to Sunday 2nd April with Autism Awareness Day on 2nd April. The theme for 2023 is colour.

Autism Awareness Day 2023
Autism Awareness Day 2023

The National Autistic Society provide support for autistic adults and children and their families.

Parental Alienation Awareness Day

Parental Alienation Awareness Day is on 25th April each year. This is a global campaign to raise awareness of Parental Alienation. It is an opportunity for parents, grandparents, extended family members or friends to come together to access information, advice and to enable connection and support for others affected by Parental Alienation.

Parental Alienation Awareness Day 2023
Parental Alienation Awareness Day 2023

Social Media

Twitter

We helped to celebrate and raise awareness on both #InternationalWomensDay and #WorldDownSyndromeDay.

#hensoldt were exhibiting at #HeliExpo (booth 5614) where they talked about airborne portfolio covering mission systems, situational awareness and certified lightweight flight data recorder. Hensoldt also won contracts from #Hyundai Heavy Industries to provide six offshore patrol vessels and two corvettes which are currently being constructed for the Philippine Navy.

Congratulations to the team at @SafranSeats who had been recognised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development at the CIPD Wales Awards for being the Best Wellbeing Initiative in the region for a large company.

@MirionHQ were exhibiting (booth 3) at the Cyber Security Implementation Workshop where they provided an insight into their solutions for cyber security, command and control and lifecycle management.

@Roche and Lilly have joined together to enhance early diagnosis of Alzheimers disease.

Looking Back!

Last month we discussed:

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Document Publisher course which we provided in March.

Still to Come this Month