CSC 508 Milestone 3

CSC 508 Milestone 3
Requirements (Re)organization and
Time Estimation;
Initial Process Analysis

ISSUED: Wednesday 13 October 1999
DUE: Monday 18 October 1999 (Parts 1A and 1B); Wednesday 20 October 1999 (Part 2)


Part 1A: Requirements (Re)organization

The primary activity for this milestone is to carefully analyze the existing requirements for your tool and estimate the amount of time it will take to perform this quarter's requirements work. The specific organizational tasks are the following:

  1. For each (sub...)section of the extant Inferno requirements for your tool, rate the content of the section as one of the following:
    1. Reuse largely as is
    2. Reuse with some rewriting
    3. Reuse with substantial rewriting
    4. Throw away (including writing from scratch where no current scenario exists)
  2. Based on extant requirements and Milestone 2 tool reviews, outline the requirements for your tool, into (sub...)sections, assuming 7+/-2 screen shots per (sub...)section. Include an indication of where extant requirements fit into the new outline.
  3. Estimate the time it will take to perform requirements analysis, based on the formula discussed below.

Part 1B: Functional Requirements Time Estimation Formula

The general estimation formula for the total time T to perform functional requirements analysis is the following: 

T = t1 + t2 + t3 + t4
where 
t1 = s1 * 7 * 1 * (.5 hour + .75 hour)
t2 = s2 * 7 * 1.5 * (.5 hour + 1 hour)
t3 = s3 * 7 * 2 * (.75 hour + 1.5 hours)
t4 = s4 * 7 * 2.5 * (1 hour + 2 hours)
The ordinal index from 1 to 4 corresponds to the content rating from above. I.e., 1 = reuse largely as is, 2 = reuse with some rewriting, 3 = reuse with substantial rewriting, 4 = rewrite from scratch. The si terms are the number of (sub...)sections at each content level. E.g., s2 = 3 means there are three (sub...)sections of requirements that require some rewriting.

The second term in each formula, with the fixed value 7, represents the average number of screens per (sub...)section. The third formula term, with values ranging from 1 to 2.5, represents the number of revisions required at each content level. E.g., at content level 3 (substantial rewrite), there is an estimated average value of 2 revisions per scenario screen and accompanying narrative. The fourth and fifth terms represent the hours per screen picture and hours per accompanying narrative for each screen. The values range from .5 and .75 hours through 1 and 2 hours, respectively. E.g., the estimated time for a completely new screen and narrative (at content level 4) is 1 + 2 hours.

Generally, there is duplication of screens in a given (sub...)section, given our tutorial style of scenario presentation. In particular, a scenario segment will typically show two or three versions of the same screen, depicting an initial screen configuration plus two or three user-modified screen configurations. The per-screen time estimate is therefore based on an average time for creating both unique and duplicated screens. E.g., it will generally take more than an hour to draw a completely new and unique screen (content level 4). However, it will subsequently take only a few minutes to duplicate the screen to change its configuration.

Part 2: Initial Process Analysis

The secondary task for this milestone is to begin to analyze the steps of the 205/206 process (outlined in Lecture Notes Week 2) vis a vis the functional requirements of your tools. This initial analysis should address the following questions:

  1. What steps of the process cannot be met by the functionality of the tool?
  2. What aspects of tool functionality are not defined in the process?
  3. How should the process be modified in order to reconcile the discrepancies revealed in the answers to questions a and b?
For this milestone, complete answers to these questions are definitely not expected. However, you should start thinking along these lines. This process analysis will continue throughout the quarter.

In some cases, e.g., the design phase, the process definition is reasonably deep. In other cases, e.g., the administer phase, the process definition is quite shallow. In the latter cases, more invention will be required on your part to answer question c. Invent away!

Deliverables

There are three deliverable files for this milestone:

  1. requirements/reorganization.html
  2. administration/requirements/time-estimate.html
  3. requirements/process-reconciliation.html

The reorganization file contains the deliverable for Part 1A of this milestone. It is a narrative description of how the extant Inferno requirements (if any) are to be reorganized plus the description of all new organizational elements.

The time-estimate file contains the deliverable for Part 1B. The specific deliverable format should define values for each of the si variables, show each of the ti formulae with si values plugged in, and show the bottom- line value of T.

The process-reconciliation file contains the deliverable for Part 2 of this milestone. It should discuss initial answers to each of the three questions, a, b and c.