Tag: newsletter

Welcome to the November 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.

Cradle Public Training Courses 2024

3SL have provided a number of Cradle public training courses in 2023. We are currently working on our 2024 training course calendar. Once this is available we will share this with you.

We still have courses available in 2023, please see our website for further information.

Critical Software and Software Bill of Material (SBOM)

The contract opportunities issued by the US Government and many US companies now include a requirement that suppliers provide a Software Bill of Material (SBOM) for all critical software – as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – that would be delivered as part of any contract fulfilment of that opportunity. This requirement is pursuant to executive order 14028 issued by the Biden administration in the US.

3SL can advise that Cradle does not fall within the definition of critical software as defined by NIST. The NIST definition and guidance can be found here.

Remember, Remember

There’s quite a bit to remember this month whether it’s the failed plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, or the war fallen.

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot!” Might be a good way to cement a date in your mind we humans tend to like rhymes, songs, and mnemonics to help our brains ‘visualise’ an otherwise abstract date or fact. However, trying to remember what’s needed and when on a large project is really quite difficult. Especially when dates are not fixed.

Cradle provides several ways to track changes in your project. One of these is to query on relative dates.

For example an item representing a ‘test’ that needs to be run could be set with a category of type date. You could then query on ‘tests‘ that are due to occur (or should have occurred) before the end of next week. It is also possible to query on a range, say beginning of this month and end of next week.

For items that are part of a work breakdown structure linked to a plan, there are some built-in ranges which can be accessed in the Progress tab in the Query Details dialog. For example, you can find all activities / tasks that are underway, those that are due to complete soon, or those that should have already completed. These provide a planning view of where your project stands.

Celebrations

We hope all our customers, suppliers and staff that celebrate Dewali, All Hallows Eve and All Saints day or remembered the defeating of the Gunpowder plot have a happy and safe celebration.

3SL join with our customers, friends and suppliers, on this armistice day,  to take a moment to remember those who have fallen fighting for their countries.

Source Document Analyses

Cradle’s Document Loader tool can be used to parse source documents and capture them into a hierarchy of items, each corresponding to one of the sections, subsections, paragraphs, tables, table rows, table cells in the document. The structure of this hierarchy mirrors the structure of the document. Each item in the hierarchy is linked to its origin in a copy of the source document that is cached in the database. This allows Cradle to perform a variety of operations on source documents:

1. Capture their contents into items that are typically the needs or user requirements to which other items are linked
2. Coverage analysis, to show which parts of the document have been captured
3. Use analysis, to show how parts of the document have been used in the database
4. Integrity analysis, to confirm that the document has been parsed into multiple items each of which is identical to the original document, or (depending on the process) has been modified only as agreed
5. Compare versions of source documents to find differences and see which database items were impacted by these differences
6. Compare a potential new version of a source document against the latest version that has previously been loaded to find the changes and assess the impact of such changes on the database as a means to decide if the new document version will be accepted

Mapping Tables When Capturing Documents

Some source documents use tables for each piece of information. For example, each requirement or test case is contained in its own table and, therefore, a document with 500 requirements will have 500 tables.

When loading such documents, you define a mapping for the first of these tables. In this mapping you specify which cells (each a row and column) will have its contents loaded, and the attribute of the Cradle item that will receive that data.  You can then apply this mapping to all other tables in the document with the same structure, and then proceed to capture the document using all of these table mappings.

We have seen a problem whereby Document Loader would fail to map multiple tables. This problem only occurred with one specific document, and only when that document was being processed on a Windows Server 2019 + Office 2016 platform. Any other combination of O/S and Office worked as expected.

We are pleased to advise that a recent Microsoft Update to Office has corrected this problem. Therefore, please ensure that if you are using Office 2016 that you use Version 2310 Build 16924.20124.

For more information about How to Set Table Mappings click here.

Latest Updates

The latest technical and related topics in our blog are:

• Cradle Modules – SWE
• Controlling PDUIDs in Import and Export

Follow these links to see the latest blog updates and then use the blog’s search to find other topics of interest! With over 500 posts in the blog, we are sure that you will find lots to interest you in the details of Cradle and 3SL!

We would also like to thank all attendees on our Risk Management course which we provided in October.

Social Media

• Supported #WorldMentalHealthDay
• Congratulated @SercoGroup on winning the contract for DWP Functional Assessment Services
• Supported #WorldMenopauseDay
• Congratulated @Medtronic on ranking #17 on @3BLnews’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list – their highest ranking yet!
• Congratulated @Roche on winning the Center of Excellence Innovation award
• Discussed the following topics:
  • Risk Management
  • Cradle-SWE (Software Engineering module)
  • PDUIDs

Still to Come this Month

• Test Execution course – November 21st to 22nd

This course is a 1 day course split over 2 half days. It provides the following modules:

• Introduction to Test Execution
• Setting up Supporting Item Types
• Test Planning
• Test Execution and Recording

Your Highlights

If you have any company news or achievements that you would like 3SL to share in any of our newsletters then please let us know.

Egging You On

We most likely understand this to mean encourage, provoke or urge. Unfortunately there is no underlying tasty treat associated with the phrase.
Eggs and Easter eggs may represent the start of a new life or regeneration and are often given at Easter after their consumption would have been prohibited during Lent.

Project

An egg holds the building instructions for a new life, and when fertilised can grow into something great. Like a new life, a  project needs to be nurtured in order to grow. However, it must be led in the correct direction, not allowed to grow too fast or out of control for the best success. There will be risks on the way and its progress needs to be monitored and checked.

Go-on

So we urge, cajole and encourage you to keep your projects safe, warm and cared for the only way we know how – in Cradle.
Now does anyone fancy taking up the Chicken and Egg debate???

Return

During April 3SL UK offices are making a phased return to the office. It’s been over 2 years since we’ve sat at our desks. It was a bit of a time capsule moment seeing diaries open on March 2020! You will still be able to email, use webinar, or snail-mail, but if you call us on +44 1229 838867 you may find different voices answer.

Training

The Project Administration 20th-21st April 2022 course is designed for project team leaders or managers who administer and manage Cradle projects. It will cover user and project administration. It will also include setting up project schemas helping your users to hit the ground running.

Social Media

Twitter

We marvelled at how a dock can float in this tweet from HII.

We reviewed the SpeedUpSolR^(TM) device, but apparently a number of people have reported difficulty buying it….. SpeedUpSolR^(TM) 😉

YouTube

Updating Item Properties. If you have a large number of items for which you need to change value(s) did you know you can set properties? Take a peek at this method on our YouTube Channel

Love, Reign and Stormy Weather

Love

February the month of Saint Valentine, according to Wikipedia a 3rd-century Roman saint. The tails of his beheading as a martyr and the distribution of his bones are quite horrific.  A far cry from the modern celebration. It wasn’t until around the 14th century that he became associated as the patron saint of lovers. Apparently this was greatly promoted by the writings of Chaucer. Quite an achievement in reuse and adaptation!

Reign

This month also saw Her Majesty The Queen celebrate 70 years on the throne. The first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, she will have seen many technological advances and changes during her time on the throne.  To illustrate the pace of progress think about a camera. During her coronation she may have been photographed by one of the first Polaroid instant cameras. In the 70s one of the first point and shoot cameras would have been the order of the day. On engagements in the 80’s one of the first digital cameras or a disposable camera could have been used, and in the 00’s snaps on phones would be the norm.

Storm

Naming storms is apparently a way to make things more memorable. A number or identifier is easy to forget. However,  many people will remember whether it was Storm Dudley or Eunice that felled the tree in their garden.

In conclusion, with tortuous metaphor bending…..

• • We Love engineering, we actively promote the concept of reuse and Adaptation.
  • We would encourage you to support an iterative and baselined design process, building on and improving the previous version whilst retaining traceability.
  • Cradle supports IDs, Names, Groups, and Comments for all item types. Making sure you use all these nomenclatures will aid you finding, discussing or grouping your requirement and design assets. After all would you rather query on ID343 or “Surface finish” ?

Training

The 2022 Public training course calendar has now been released. This has courses covering the main functions of Cradle. It is ideal if you are on-boarding new staff, or  are just new to Cradle. These online courses are tutor led so there is full interactivity and ability to ask questions. You’ll also be able to benefit from the questions and experience of other candidates.

These public courses are in addition to our individual company offerings. If your company has a large number of trainees for instance, or wants on-site training we will put on a separate course. Additionally if you need a course tailoring to your industry/implementation you should contact salesdetails@threesl.com

INCOSE Systems Engineering Tools Database

3SL has registered as a SETDB vendor with INCOSE

INCOSE have updated their vendor tool listings with a new database, the Systems Engineering Tools Database (SETDB). We have fully updated our entry and system engineers can search the database with their INCOSE membership, or an SETDB membership through systemsengineeringtools.com.

We are listed under 3SL and Cradle and our competencies listed in all available categories within their database.  This will be added to as they further update their database capabilities.

Social Media

Twitter

We wondered just how a seedling will function in space. Without gravity how will it grow up? Its leaves will be able to grow towards a light, but at the time of sprouting, which way will the root grow? All vital information, being worked on by @NorthropGrumman  if we are to grow crop resources in space.

Love is in the air we tweeted a Valentine message and reminded you that we use the hashtag #LoveEngineering to retweet and highlight stories from our customers and general engineering accomplishments. Why not join us in promoting good engineering stories?

We also noted that Samuel Plimsoll was to be congratulated on developing the simple safe load ship markings. This used the engineering principle of displacement in different salinity.  Mistakenly we thought this had nothing to do with the deck shoes of the same name, thanks to one eagle eyed reader. They pointed out “Plimsolls, the shoes, were named in his honour in 1876 (when his whistleblowing campaign for a loadline had made him a household name) by a sales rep for the Liverpool Rubber Company, because, being canvas above and rubber underneath, the shoes could only be safely immersed in water up to a certain point – like a merchant ship. ”

YouTube

You’ll have read that the new Public Training Calendar has been released.  Just to emphasise the benefits of training, for those that like something a little more visual (to send to their boss maybe), here’s our mini promo.

Happy New Year

We hope all those celebrating over Christmas had a safe and happy time, and were not too badly affected by Covid 19. Welcome to the January 2022 – Newsletter.

Into a new year and a time to reflect on both your company’s achievements and problems. Whilst the turn of a date is nothing magical, the psychological effect of a new term can really help enthuse and help us focus.

If a project wasn’t quite on track, a root cause analysis can help identify where things went astray. Use this as a positive for new projects and look out for the ‘gotcha’ next time round. It is also important to identify the successes, the team and company can lever the feel-good factor on jobs well done.

Training

We’re putting together this year’s public training course calendar.  These courses are open to all and are delivered online in a shared environment with a live instructor. The biggest benefit of live training is that you can ask questions as the course progresses.

If your company has a large number of trainees or wants the course tailoring contact salesdetails@threesl.com

Release

If you have not already don’t forget to grab the latest Cradle 7.6.1 release: see https://www.threesl.com/blog/cradle-7-6-1-released/

Social Media

Twitter

We looked how encryption technology now fits in our palm rather than a filing cabinet!  and how the early pointer telegraph has progressed.

We looked at how to lock users out of a Cradle project so you can administer backups for example.

YouTube

Whatever the scale of project you are starting in 2022 we can help with your Requirements Management.
That’s all for the January 2022 – Newsletter