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

Topics for Today Major Milestones Minor Milestones Periodic Status Assessments

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.

Review - Artifacts Associated with Workflows

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.

Review - Typical Build Sequence

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.

Checkpoints

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.

Status Across Major Milestones

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.

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.

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.

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.

Architecture Milestone Artifacts

Architecture Milestone Agenda

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.

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

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.

Typical Minor Milestones

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.

Status Assessment Reviews

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.

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.

Assignment for Next Class Meeting In class Mid-Term Exam

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.

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.