K P I Requirements

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analysis, design, infrastructure, management, modeling, perspective, planning, process, project, recovery, requirements, resources, software, technology

Key Performance Indicators are measurements and projections that can help a management team make decisions about the Strategic and Tactical Plans for the future of an organization.

Many business requirements describe operational necessities of an application or a business App or Function but how should we expect a Requirement for a K P I automated function be stated?

In the following list, I would like to prompt / instigate some higher order thinking about Requirements that we can document to be included in our new application development efforts so that the app can support or anticipate how the active executive or decision making management of an organization can use the operational data to consider new decisions:

• What is a predictive inventory forecasting tool?
  • What could it be used for?
• What could dynamic Purchase Order generation do for our organization?
  • What would we base the automated PO Generation on?
• Could we predict the need for additional staff in specialized areas of our product or service delivery organizations?
  • Based on what criteria?
• What information would be useful to re-design manufactured products to increase useful life, reduce maintenance costs, and provide more value to our Customers?
• …

What questions would YOU like to ask of your operational data that could help you make critical business model decisions in the foreseeable future?

Time for THE BOOK

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agile, analysis, best practice, career, conflict, data, design, event, file, flowchart, infrastructure, life, lifecyle, management, modeling, organization, perspective, planning, process, program manager, project, project manager, quality, records, relational, requirements, resources, retention, schedule, scheduling, scope, SDLC, software, state, technology, use case, visual

A few weeks ago (May 2018), I started a “Go Fund Me” site to gather some money so that I can publish “The Book” that represents many of the ideas from this blog.

The Title of the book will be: “IT’s Lost Art of Software Engineering” and will contain much of what has been posted in this blog for the last few years.  If you are interested, please use the link below to review my Go Fund Me site and, possibly, make a donation for me.

https://www.gofundme.com/bg039s-software-engineering-book&rcid=r01-153045704526-710aea5b95e24eeb&pc=em_co_campmgmt_w

Please keep in mind that anyone who donates $10.00 USD or more will get a FREE and SIGNED copy of the book (I will need a mailing address after the donation) once it is available in hard copy.

Your support would mean a lot to me. Thank you so much!  bgbg

27 Aug 2018: The Go Fund Me effort is dragging on very slowly and, if it doesn’t pick up its pace relatively soon, I will probably decide to return the few donations I have received and shut down this effort.

However, there is still time so if you want to make a donation (and get a FREE SIGNED copy of the book) please go to my Fund Me page (https://www.gofundme.com/bg039s-software-engineering-book&rcid=r01-15353992165-7b0de45af8ef42b2&pc=ot_co_campmgmt_w) and make a $10 or more donation quickly.

Thanx you in advance, bgbg

 

Data’s After Life

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after, after life, career, data, education, employment, file, files, life, priority issues, record, records, retention

When we are born, a birth certificate is usually created with our Name, Date, Weight, Length, Parents names, location, etc..  It is also at this point that our Health Record begins tracking injections, infections, operations, procedures, prescriptions, reactions…

When / If we join or are entered into some religious group, records are kept of the group name, location, and other pertinent information.  This “membership” will also keep track of events specific to the organization: Bat Mitzvah, Baptism, Weddings, Death notices.

As we proceed through our education, data is collected about where we attended, what courses we took, what grades we achieved and what disciplinary actions might have been taken / necessary.  And there are records for the costs and debts we incur.  Those Student Loan records will follow us forever, whenever, however we try to lose them.

And, again, during our education, we take / make notes on paper or electronically and we retain some of these notes for studying in preparation to take exams where we get Grades and notices from our Instructors about how to improve or maintain our level of achievement

Once we graduate from schools or leave before we might have graduated, we join other communities: The Military, Religious Orders, Jobs, Companies of one kind of another.  These events are when the real interesting data events start to unfurl.

Employment records keep track of Titles, Achievements, Income, Employments Benefits and Costs, Taxes (Paid or Owed), Hiring, Firing, Performance Assessments, Remediation Steps taken or suggested, …

Self employment must keep track of Expense, Income, Tax Payments, Deductions and regulatory tax filing whether we are employed or self employed.

While employed (self or otherwise) we create info in files or on paper reflecting the content and intent of our positions.  Some of these records are stored on our employers’ media since they are “works for hire” and others are retained in files (paper or electronic) in our own locations: file cabinets, folders, baskets, trash bins or hard drives / cloud drives.

Some of us write books, recipes, instructions, blogs, articles, clippings, critiques, editorials.  These materials are retained, published, sold, held for posterity, hoarded.

There are hard drives and manila folders all over the world that contain treasures and trash containing the data of our lives.  There is value and potential wasted time in the content of these files.  But, who uses these values?  What happens to all that learning, discovery, insight, … if no one has access to all this data?

What will happen to your data when you no longer have access to it?

What is the After Life of our Data?  Who could benefit from our information?  Who will benefit from yours once you have no more need of it?

The Path To Inkc Profile

Tags

best practice, business sponsors, data, data design, flowchart, functional decomposition, iterative, modeling, old school

• How many ways would you be willing to collect income:
  • Full Time Employment with Salary and Benefits?
  • Part Time Employment paid by the Hour or Piece of Work?
  • Signed Master Service Agreement(s) for predefined services, rate and duration?
  • Signed Purchase Order(s) for your product offering(s)?
  • Incorporation of your own new company and the creation of new jobs for yourself and others?
  • Royalty / Investment Income?
• Do you still think that you only need ONE Source of Income to survive in our current world?

I don’t expect that many people could manage all of these incomes sources (or others), but wouldn’t it be nice if you could maintain two or more of these?  And, IF one of your new income sources were to “dry up” for a time, wouldn’t it be nice that you could have the others to keep you going?

If the answers to these questions intrigue you, reach out to me for an initial free review: William (Bill) Gutches at 610.662.5658 or whendoyoustoplooking@gmail.com .

My Social Media Web Presence techniques and Business Planning experiences coupled with your passion for your products and/or services have the potential to get you in a position where two or more of these income sources can be sustained.  Please let me know if you are interested in talking to me about these possibilities.

William (Bill) Gutches ► Social Media ☑ Web and Blog Content ☑ Income Search Coach ☑Business Planning Coach ☑ Contact Info: ☛ whendoyoustoplooking@gmail.com  ☛  610.662.5658

Testing Centric Life Cycle

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agile, analysis, best practice, business sponsors, conflict, data, data design, design, event, flowchart, functional decomposition, iterative, jackson, lifecyle, management, model choices, modeling, organization, perspective, priority issues, priority sequence, process, project charter, punch list, requirements, scope, SDLC, state, state transition, state transition diagrams, swim lane, technology, use case, visual

Could there be such a thing as a Testing Centric Life Cycle?

What would it have to look like to be Testing Centric?  Wouldn’t we have to ask questions of each Deliverable to prove that it somehow supports what we believe our end goal to be?  How would we construct these questions to ask of our Life Cycle Deliverables so that the answers would be good indications of our reasons to proceed?

Imagine if we were to create a Statement of Work (SOW) for a project intended to build a new business application for an organization.  If we wanted to TEST this SOW, what questions would we ask of it that could help us understand that its content was supportive of our end goals?

It might be possible for us to start asking questions about the Scope described in this Statement of Work:

1. Does the scope indicate where our input data will be coming from?
2. Does the scope explain how our product / application will affect the data?
3. Does it show how the affected data will provide additional value over our inputs?
4. Can we tell from the scope statement what external events and/or operators our application will have to respond to?
5. Can we predict how we will have to maintain the data collected, modified, reported, used to accomplish the intended functions of our product / application?
6. Is our design and scope Orthogonal?  (Not a trick question; read other portions of this blog!)

If we accept the notion that each Deliverable in the path of our project plan must answer questions that relate to its completeness and its alignment with previous deliverables, then the Test Centric Life Cycle Model can be strongly directed by the premise behind Orthogonality:

• All modeling components MUST be reflected in all Other Modeling perspectives so that when each component and its related model components are removed, nothing remains in any of the models
• Model perspectives should address, at least, the following disciplines or viewpoints:
  • Event Diagram
  • Process Diagram
  • Data Model Diagram
  • State Transition Diagram

Do you think, dear reader, that this thread of discussion should continue or be dropped?

Please Respond / Comment on this post OR Reply to me at whendoyoustoplooking@gmail.com

Thanx, bgbg

Orthogonal Dependencies

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agile, analysis, best practice, business sponsors, data, data design, design, event, flowchart, functional decomposition, iterative, lifecyle, management, model choices, modeling, priority issues, process, requirements, scope, SDLC, state, state transition, state transition diagrams, swim lane, technology, use case

• When an Event occurs that your application must respond to
  • a Process is performed
    • Each Process takes the data from an Event and Stores it in a Data Store
      • Where it’s State is established
• There are Data States that require your application responds to
  • By Performing a Process
    • Which collects the related Data and makes changes
      • Where the State of the Data records are changed
• And there are Business Transactions that require your application to
  • Perform a Process
    • That gather relevant Data and makes updates to these Data
      • Where the State of the Data Records are changed

Build a set of models that leave no Event, State, Data, or Transaction without response and you have built a Complete Solution.

Watch this space: I’m writing AGAIN!!!

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agile, analysis, best practice, business sponsors, conflict, data, data design, design, event, flowchart, functional decomposition, investors, iterative, jackson, lifecyle, management, model choices, modeling, nassi-schneidermann, old school, organization, perspective, planning, politics, priority issues, priority sequence, process, project charter, project priority, punch list, rapid, recovery assessment, requirements, resolution, scope, SDLC, state, state transition, state transition diagrams, stockholders, swim lane, technology, use case, visual, warnier-orr

I just want you all to know that I have started writing again. Recently, I have spent a lot of time NOT writing (did have some other things to take care of, and still do), but it appears I have the bug again!

So, I want to let all of you, my readers, know that I am starting again with new materials AND I also want you to know that I have several blogs I am writing on:

Project Management Handbook: http://www.projectmanagementhandbook.wordpress.com

BG Opinions: http://www.opinionsarefree.wordpress.com

Sixty Somethin: http://www.sixtysomethin.wordpress.com

Please check these out and I hope that you continue to enjoy reading, and please send me your comments or suggestions at whendoyoustoplooking@gmail.com or some of my other email addresses for these blogs.

Thanx, bgbg

Wordle me: Business Analyst

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agile, analysis, best practice, business sponsors, data design, event, flowchart, functional decomposition, iterative, lifecyle, management, model choices, old school, planning, process, project charter, requirements, scope, SDLC, state transition, swim lane, use case

Check this out…

Thanx, bgbg

Modeling for Money!

Tags

analysis, design, lifecyle, modeling, planning, requirements, scope, SDLC, visual

One of the basic principles of Software Engineering is the creation of visual models to demonstrate the project team’s understanding of the discoveries we are collecting from the users who are driving our discussions.

The type of drawings were proscribed by several authors of the time but regardless of the style of the drawing, they all have a relatively consistent set of focal points:

1. Process Definition where a step by step sequence of events was pictured with indications of the data or other resources being used for each process step.  The fundamental assumption was that each process step DID something to input to create its output.  For example: Calculate total line item cost, Apply local and country tax amounts, Add line item cost and taxes for line item total.
2. Data Definition where a data subject or entity would describe all the details of each data element that was essential for that entry or entity to be “Complete”.  An entity would represent data that was necessary for the functional and operational aspects of the solution without unnecessary redundancy.  Examples are: Product Catalog, Customer Info, Order Details.
3. State Transition diagrams are used to reflect what “State” each data entity is in when a process step starts and completes.  These “State Conditions” are very useful for managing the evolution of each data entity and preventing some illogical transitions from occurring.  Some examples: New Entry, Priced, Counted, Shipped.
4. Event Diagrams are supplemental to the Process Diagrams and can initiate process steps depending on occurrences that happen outside of the planned application.  Examples: Customer Submits Order from Web Site, Customer Credit Card fails Authentication.