1. Ninth Lecture Hour 8:30 – 9:20 pm, Thursday, September 13
Checkpoints of the Process
(from Chapter 9 of Royce’ book)

2. Topics for Today Major Milestones Minor Milestones
Periodic Status Assessments

3. Review - Seven Software Process Workflows
Management
Controlling the process.
Environment
Automating the process.
Requirements
Analysis and evolving requirements artifacts.
Design
Modeling and evolving the architectures and design artifacts.
Implementation
Programming and evolving the implementation and deployment artifacts.
Assessment
Assessing trends in process and product quality.
Deployment
Transitioning the end products to the use.

4. Review - Artifacts Associated with Workflows

5. Review - Iteration Workflow
Design
Evolving the architecture and baseline design, design and test models, updating design set artifacts.
Implementation
Developing and acquiring new components, integration and testing.
Assessment
Evaluating the results of the iteration: compliance, quality, performance. Change decisions.
Deployment
Transitioning the release to users, IV&V contractor, customer, regulators.
Management element
Planning for the release, use case selection, detail assignments.
Environment
Evolving the change order database for new baselines for product, test and environment components.
Requirements
Analyzing the requirements artifact set, elaborate use cases and evaluation criteria.

6. Review - Typical Build Sequence

7. Management Reviews Major milestones Minor milestones
System-wide reviews at end of each of the four phases.
Minor milestones
Iteration-focused events to review iterations.
Includes a release specification (release plan and evaluation criteria), and release description (results of the evaluation of the release.)
Status assessments
Periodic events to assess progress.

8. Checkpoints

9. Major Milestones Reviewers
Customers
Schedules, budgets, feasibility, risk assessment, requirements, progress, compatibility.
Users
Requirements, usage scenarios, growth, quality.
Architects
Requirements changes, tradeoffs, completeness, balance.
Developers
Requirements details, consistency, resolution of risks, environment.
Maintainers
Sufficiency of product and documentation artifacts, understandibility, interoperability, environment.
Others
Regulators, IV&V contractor, subcontractors, associate contractors, sales, marketing.

10. Status Across Major Milestones

11. Life-Cycle Objectives Milestone
Occurs at end of Inception Phase.
Includes: Plan, estimated cost and schedule, expected benefits, vision statement andcritical issues, operational concept.
Contains draft architecture document.
Contains a prototype architecture demonstration.
Goal: Authorization to proceed to Elaboration Phase.

12. Life-Cycle Architecture Milestone
Goal:
Demonstrate an executable architecture.
Authorization to Proceed with the construction phase.
Includes:
Detailed plan for the construction phase, critical issues regarding requirements and the operational concept, baseline architecture, baseline vision, baseline software development plan, evaluation criteria for the initial operational capability milestone.

13. Readiness for Architecture Milestone
Critical use cases defined and scenarios prepared for evaluating architecture
Stable architecture baselined and demonstrated.
Risk profile is well understood. Common understanding of outstanding risks, and mitigation plans fully elaborated.
Development plans for remaining phases are defined.

14. Architecture Milestone Contents
Presentation and Overview of the current state of the software project.
A configuration-controlled set of all engineering data for the engineering artifacts.
An executable demonstration of capability.

15. Architecture Milestone Artifacts

16. Architecture Milestone Agenda

17. Initial Operational Capability Milestone
Goals
Assess readiness to begin transition into customer and user sites.
Authorize beginning of acceptance tests.
Items for Milestone
Installation instructions and issues, software version descriptions, user and operator manuals, support for user sites, test environment, and test software.

18. Product Release Milestone
Goal
Assess the completion of software and its transition.
Milestone contents
Results of acceptance testing, open issues, installation issues, support issues.

19. Minor Milestones
Primarily, iteration readiness reviews and iteration assessment reviews.
Early iteration focus
Design and analysis, discovery, experimentations, risk assessment.
Later iteration focus
Completeness, consistency, usage, and change management.
Other minor milestones.
Test readiness reviews, test results, special issues.

20. Typical Minor Milestones

21. Periodic Status Assessments
Assessments are crucial for focusing management attention on the health of the project.
Generally status assessments are held each month or each quarter during the project.
Preparations ideally should include no more than one day’s effort by the software project manager. (Use day-to-day material to prepare the presentation.)
Assessments also can be used for project-to-project comparisons, and dissemination of best practices within the organization.

22. Status Assessment Reviews

23. Summary for Checkpoints of the Process
Checkpoints provide for control of the development process.
Major Milestones are the Objectives, Architecture, Initial Operational Capability, and the Product Release Milestones.
Minor Milestones are for iteration readiness and iteration results reviews.
Periodic Assessment Reviews are for focusing management attention on the health of the project.

24. Reading Assignment for Next Class
Read Chapters 9 of Royce’ book, on process checkpoints.
Learn the four major milestones.
Learn the primary purpose of each of the four major milestones.
Learn the six topics of periodic status assessment reviews.

25. Assignment for Next Class Meeting
In class Mid-Term Exam

26. Sample Mid-Term Exam 1. List all 7 steps of the waterfall model.
2. List keywords for all 5 improvements needed for the waterfall model approach to work.
3. List keywords for 4 of Barry Boehm’s “Top Ten List” for the state of software development.
4. List all 5 major parameters in the software effort estimation formula.
5. List keywords for 2 of the five attributes of a good software estimate.
6. List keywords for 4 of the five good staffing principles.
7. List keywords for all 3 major problem area failures of peer inspections.
8. List keywords for the top 5 of Royce’ top 10 principles for modern software management.
9. List all 2 stages for economic software development processes.
10. List keywords for the major emphasis for each of the 2 stages.
11. List all 4 phases of a modern life-cycle development process.
12. List the names of 2 of the 5 artifact sets for modern management.
13. List keywords for the major elements of the 2 artifacts sets in question #12.
14. List 3 of the five views of an architecture description.
15. List the 3 of the four sets which comprise an architectural baseline.
16. List the 7 basic workflows for a modern software development process.

27. Sample Mid-Term Exam 1. List all 7 steps of the waterfall model.
2. List keywords for all 5 improvements needed for the waterfall model approach to work.
3. List keywords for 4 of Barry Boehm’s “Top Ten List” for the state of software development.
4. List all 5 major parameters in the software effort estimation formula.
5. List keywords for 2 of the five attributes of a good software estimate.
6. List keywords for 4 of the five good staffing principles.
7. List keywords for all 3 major problem area failures of peer inspections.
8. List keywords for the top 5 of Royce’ top 10 principles for modern software management.
9. List all 2 stages for economic software development processes.
10. List keywords for the major emphasis for each of the 2 stages.
11. List all 4 phases of a modern life-cycle development process.
12. List the names of 2 of the 5 artifact sets for modern management.
13. List keywords for the major elements of the 2 artifacts sets in question #12.
14. List 3 of the five views of an architecture description.
15. List the 3 of the four sets which comprise an architectural baseline.
16. List the 7 basic workflows for a modern software development process.