SLM-Designs

January 24, 2017

Collaborative Lifecycle Management Information Model

mats Design Portfolio, Designs, SLM-Designs, System Lifecycle Management Designs, SLM

Collaborative Lifecycle Management Information Model

The leading ALM solution from IBM is the Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM), which consists of Rational Requirements Composer (aka Rational DOORS NG), Rational Team Concert, Rational Quality Manager, and Rational Design Manager. The Jazz platform is strategic for implementing the Rational solution for CLM. The Jazz platform is all about collaboration; it allows individual products to integrate better and more easily, and allows the users of those products who take on distinct roles to work more effectively together than has historically been possible. The Jazz platform supports a more collaborative approach to ALM tools and their users. The approach is open. It leverages the standards used by the Internet. Just as the internet works with data spread around the world, the approach is to allow development team data to be spread around an organization, and yet to have development artifacts as easily accessible as surfing the world-wide-web. Through the support for OSLC, integrations can be provided for Jazz-based products. Additionally, third-party vendors and customers can consume or provide their own OSLC interfaces to support heterogeneous environments made up of Rational, third party, and/or customer solutions. The combination of Jazz and OSLC provides the ability to have unprecedented collaboration, transparency, automation, and traceability.

What’s wrong with Change Management State Schemas?

The artifact information model used by the Collaborative Lifecycle Management solution, adopted and extended in the IoT Collaborative Engineering solution, is radically different compared to classic change management and lifecycle tools like Rational Clear Quest. In CQ the complete lifecycle was managed in the complex schema. In CALM the state is distributed over a network of linked and related artifacts. User research on the use of schema-based change management systems identified user pain points

Complex information schemas modeling artifact types and lifecycles all in ONE schema.
Weak integrations across lifecycle tools with demands on data synchronization across repositories. Most schemas reference other schemas on the same installation.
Limited plan information allows teams to plan changes and work using agile methods
Support for centralized deployment or multisite synchronization
Support for rich client installation at every user desktop

Research at our enterprise clients reports on similar pain points in establishing a state schema, resulting in years in negotiating a corporate-wide schema in ClearQuest that managed the lifecycle of Change Requests as a single state model.

What’s new with Collaborative Lifecycle Management?

An application or system lifecycle is composed of multiple domains and disciplines; Requirements, Designs, Tests, Change Requests, and Plans
Each discipline defines a set of core artifact types. For example, managing tests needs the specification of Test Scripts, Test Cases, Test Suites, Test Plans, Test Results.
Each artifact has a state. A Requirements may be New, Reviewed, Approved, Implemented, Verified, and Delivered. Or even Duplicate or Withdrawn. The state forms a state model.
Artifacts have relations, or links, to other artifacts of the same or other domains. A Requirements is validated by a Test Case. A Defect is planned for an Iteration.
Artifacts have relationships. A Software Requirements satisfies a Subsystem Requirements, that in its turn satisfies a System Requirements, that in its turn satisfies a Stakeholder Requirement.
Artifacts have attributes that classify the type. A System Requirement, Subsystem Requirement, and Software Requirement all have shared and unique attributes. Some are mandatory, others are optional.
Links have types that carry semantic meaning. A link between two works items may, for example, be a Parent, Child, or Blocks.
The semantic interpretation of the link provides insights into the state of the systems. Identifying all Requirements in the current Iteration that has Blocking defects is a good insight into the readiness to release and any unstable/unavailable content of the release.
The artifact and state models are defined by the client organization and are tailored to implement the development process adopted.
The artifact link models are defined by the client organizations
Considering links to be URLs allows artifacts to be distributed over multiple services, locally or globally, and provides flexible centralized or distributed deployment options.

Let’s consider an example by walking the structure in the diagram

A Requirement is a part of a larger Requirements Module or Collection specifying a system or an application
A Requirement is implemented as a Story
The Story may be decomposed into Tasks and there may be Defects in the emerging implementation
The Story is planned for an Iteration in a Release
A Requirement and Story is tested by a Test Case
A Test Case will generate a Test Result in a Test Iteration / Milestone
A failing Test Case will result in a Defect on a Story
All tests are a part of a Test Plan testing a Release
Implementing a Story will create a Change Set of changes in a versioned File
Changes to a File is organized by Streams making sure that only related changes go into a Build
A Build is made up of Change Sets on versioned Files in a Stream
A Workspace is a collection of Streams that are integrated into a Build
Tests Cases generate Test Results on a deployed Build

Formulating an ALM User Experience Strategy

Based on our research we formulated the ‘ALM Principles’ that was validated by our sponsors

Development is not an island unto itself; it provides a service to the business
There are cycles within cycles many of which are ripe for automation
A Solution is created by a social network of people producing artifacts
Solutions never die, they are refined and maintained for years
Assets are Investments

Reporting on Collaborative Lifecycle Management

In 2009 I co-led the publishing of the CALM Redbook together with Carolyn Pampino and a group of Rational SMEs. The Redbook provides a blueprint for Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management by using an end-to-end reference scenario for deploying the new Rational products and ‘Agility at Scale’ into an existing enterprise environment. The scenarios produced for the Redbook cover Change Management, Requirements Management, Enterprise Integration Builds, and Test Management. It also discusses metrics for team success in Application Lifecycle Management.

“ALM is the thread that ties the development lifecycle together” – Forrester analyst Carey Schwaber”

January 24, 2017

Systems Lifecycle Management and Systems Delivery Scenarios

mats Design Portfolio, Designs, SLM-Designs, System Lifecycle Management Designs, SLM

Systems Lifecycle Management and Systems Delivery Scenarios

From this generalized CLM@scale lifecycle we focus the System Delivery scenario on a story in six acts. These acts focus the scenario on exploring key workflows and lifecycle capability requirements of a System Lifecycle Management solution and are designed to answer a primary lifecycle question that is critical to the success of the project. The six acts cover aspects of configuring the project, planning the project, delivering a part of the system, managing changing requirements, stabilizing the system release, and hand-off of the release.

These acts are common to the CLM scenarios. The figure indicates where specific extensions have been identified to explore system delivery scenes.

Act 1 – Inspect and Adapt

The project admin(s) and the project lead(s) are set up and configuring lifecycle management for the project. This act covers upgrading the system delivery platform to the latest release of the products. It also covers the deployment of new tools and capabilities in the system delivery platform. The act also includes how the project environment is configured and related CLM repositories are linked. Finally, it explores how the team selects an improvement strategy and how the practices and process automation used by the project is configured and deployed to the system delivery platform.

Act 2 – System Engineering / Plan Release. This act explores System engineering, Project release planning, and how these two practices interact in a System Delivery project. The act explores how system requirements engineering is supported by the tools on the System Delivery platform, and how Stakeholder Requirements, System Requirements, System Use-Cases, System Architecture relate to the project Iteration plans and Test Plans.

Act 3 – Complete a System Requirement. In this act one of the software delivery teams are planning, modeling, delivering, and integrating a sub-system use-case. This explores the use of model-driven development using the System Delivery platform. It also explores new development collaboration workflows using Modeling and CLM scenarios. The CLM@scale scenario reference this act as Complete a Story.

Act 4- Respond to Change. Requirements Change Management is a key capability for System Delivery teams. This act explores how new formal change requests are submitted, triaged, how the impact from change is analyzed, and how requirements are updated, reviewed, approved, and baselined.

Act 5 – Stabilize. Lifecycle Management with Jazz enables rich capabilities for monitoring project health through CLM queries. This act explores how reporting and Jazz Dashboards help the team ensure quality and prepare for the release.

Act 6 – Deliver. The team is handing off the system release.

Acts are broken into scenes to explore smaller, concrete goals. Browse the links above to learn more about the scenes in each act.

The Scenario Personas

The actors in the System Delivery scenario share common CLM scenarios personas. In some cases, the role name may be adjusted to suit the vocabulary and needs of the scenario. In summary, for this scenario, we use the following teams and roles

Project Management team

Ursula – Product Manager. Owner of the product. Prioritizes stakeholder needs.
Patricia – Project and Resource Manager. Responsible for project schedule & deliverables.
Scott – Development Manager. Managing the project development teams.
Andy – Project and tool administrator. Manages the project repositories and servers and clients used by the project.

System Engineering team

Bob – Requirements engineer. Responsible for system requirements.
Sally – System architect. Defines and validates the system architecture. Manages subsystem dependencies.

Software Engineering / Software subsystem team

Marco – Software team lead and developer. Manages the agile plans for the software subsystem.
Al – Software subsystem architect. Responsible for the software architecture.
Deb – Developer. Practices model-driven development. Performs unit testing of her changes.
Tanuj – Tester. Validates the quality of the software subsystem.

Integration and Validation

Tammy – Test manager. Responsible for the overall quality of the system delivery. Leads the independent test team that performs integration validation, and system acceptance tests.
Rebecca – System integration engineer and Release engineer. Manages software integration builds.
Terry – Test architect. Responsible for test architectures and test configurations.

Systems Delivery with CLM – Act 1 – Inspect and Adapt

Synopsis

The System Delivery scenario story starts with the project team preparing the System Delivery platform for the new project. Andy, one of the project admin(s), deploys or updates the system delivery platform tools. Scott, the development lead, configures the discipline processes and reports for the project. Some of the steps in the scenes below are shared across the CALM scenarios. Other steps are scenario extensions for the System Delivery platform.

What we Learn

In this act, we are deepening our understanding about

Install and upgrade path for the capabilities in the System Delivery platform
How to configure a multi-repository and multi-discipline project

Scene Details

Install system delivery platform* – Andy upgrades existing servers and installs new servers. He configures and tests the server connections using OSLC.
Configure System Delivery Platform* – Scott configures new project areas and establishes links across the related project areas.
Tailor and test process(es) – Scott adds new discipline practices to the project process specifications. He tests and deploys the changes.
Tailor and test report(s) – Scott adds new reports from selected practices. He adopts the reports to the project. He updates the project dashboards.
Onboard project – Andy and Scott moves the project infrastructure to production and inform the project teams on how to use changes to process, reports, events, and dashboards

* Scenario extensions for system delivery

Systems Delivery with CLM – Act 2 – Plan release

Synopsis

In this act, we explore how the project is started. Our focus is on System Engineering and Project Planning.

The first scene explores how Ursula, the product manager, is establishing the concept for the project through managing the stakeholder needs and managing the proposal and approval of the system delivery project. We then switch to the next scene where the System Engineering team captures the system requirements, system use-cases, and how traceability is established between the system requirements. In the following two scenes, we explore how the project leadership team is transforming the prioritized system requirements into a project plan, development plans, and test plans. In the final scene, the project leaders are reviewing, approve, and baselining the project plans.

What we Learn

In this act, we are deepening our understanding about

How OSLC linking between Requirements, Architecture and Plan Items support System Engineering practices
How to plan a project or a program using multiple related project areas and iteration plans

Scene Details

Develop Vision and Concept – Ursula managed stakeholder requirements documents and change requests, and prepares a project proposal for approval.
Organize requirements – The System Engineering team analyzes the requirements.
Plan project – The project team plans the project.
Plan test effort – The test team plans the integration, verification, and validation test activities.
Assess and approve the plan – The project leadership team approves the project plans.

Lifecycle Management Resources

This act in the scenario focuses on two areas in the lifecycle management resource structure; the system requirements, and the plans of the project.

Systems Delivery with CLM – Act 3 – Complete a System Requirement

Synopsis

In this act, we use the System Development practices to explore how the team uses the System Delivery platform to realize system requirements as part of one increment/iteration.

The software sub-system team (in the system delivery project) is using an agile approach to iterative (incremental/spiral) development. Each project iteration is planned for about 4-6 weeks. The objective of each iteration is to realize and validate a set of system requirements and use-cases, resolve prioritized defects and change requests, and integrate the sub-systems into a complete integrated demonstrator/prototype of the system product.

There are potentially many details to explore in this act. We primarily focus the exploitation on two workflows

The lifestyle management support in the System Delivery platform for the plan, analysis, design, test, and retrospect activities in an increment/iteration
The lifecycle management support for model-driven development in the Design and Implement scene
- Collaboration with Requirements Engineer and Software Architect
- Design review of model-based design
- Code review of model-based design
- Process controlled delivery of code and model elements

What we learn

In this act, we are deepening our understanding about

How task as a service help the discipline teams manage their iteration planning and work breakdown
How work item templates are used to form patterns of teamwork assignments for role-based work breakdown
How to browse plan items, requirements, and models using OSLC / CALM links
How collaboration takes place in a model-driven development team, and how the new model server supports such collaboration
How to use the Jazz SCM and the Work Item review process for model information

Lifecycle Management Resources

This act in the scenario focuses on the lifecycle resources managed by one of the development teams. It expands the resource structure established in Act 2 in the context of the realization of a system requirement. The key lifecycle resources are

Work Items assigned to the development teams members to analyze, design, implement and test the system requirement realization. In the figure above these work, items are called out as Requirements Engineering Task, Software Architect Task, Developer Task, and Test Task.
Detailed Requirements and/or Sub-system architecture artifacts
Design artifacts like; Sub-system design, generated or modified source files.
Continuous builds of the software sub-system modules
Test artifacts like; Configure test cases, with test scripts, and execution results of the test cases.
Defects from failing test cases
Queries and reports that the completeness of the system requirements increment plan.

Systems Delivery with CLM – Act 4 – Respond to Change

In this act, we explore the Requirements Change Management capability in the System Delivery platform.

In Act 1 the team approved a set of requirements. In this Act a change request has come in that impacts the baselined plan. We explore the steps of how the team agrees to accept it, which changes the requirements, the dev & test teams also respond to the change.

What we learn

Understand how Requirements Change Management works across providers and consumers of the RM and CM OSLC specs.
Understand suspect links

Lifecycle Management Resources

The Requirements Change Management scenario outlines a set of core OSLC resources

Change Request – a request for change on an approved requirement
Requirement – a requirement on the system
Impacted Requirements – related requirements that also are impacted by the change request
Requirements Change Set – a container for the proposed changes to the requirement(s) in the RM repository

This act in the scenario expands the lifecycle resources to explore the relations to project planning and realization and validation of the changed requirement. These resources include

Release plan – the plan the change request is planned for
Design and Test tasks – the plan items for the team to work on to realize and test the changes
Model elements – impacted requirements captured as models
ChangeSet – the changes to model and code
Build – the first build containing the delivered changes
The test case, Test execution, and Test result – the validation that the delivered changes are fulfilling the changed requirements

Systems Delivery with CLM – Act 5 – Stabilize

Synopsis

The system project is approaching its delivery. The focus of the remaining iteration/increment is to stabilize the release. Process changes where deliveries require approvals. But the main focus is on the system versification

What we learn

In this act, we are deepening our understanding about

How to support the System Verification phase on the System Delivery platform
Collaboration across development and verification teams
Use of measures, dashboards, and reports during stabilization

System Delivery Measures

Completion = how done the project or phase is
Rate = the rate at which work is being done
Quality = the quality and stability of the deliverable
Schedule = the accuracy of the scheduling and estimating process
Complexity = how hard the work is

Systems Engineering Metrics

Requirements analyzed – # of requirements that have been reviewed and allocated to a use case
Use cases analyzed – # of use cases analyzed (incl. scenario elaboration and executable state machine run)
Use cases allocated – # of analyzed use cases allocated into the selected systems architecture (includes
construction of logical ICDs and messaging between architectural subsystems)
Use case complexity – # of transitions + # of actions on use case state machine
Requirements productivity – # of requirements allocated to use cases and to the selected architecture per person-month of effort
Requirements volatility – # of requirements changed
Use Case Defect density – # of identified defects per use case
Schedule variance – % difference between actual effort and estimated effort
Task variance – average % difference between actual effort and estimated effort per task

Software Engineering Metrics

Defect Density – # defects per 1000 lines of delivered source code OR # defects per class
Unit Test Density – # unit tests per 1000 lines of delivered source code OR # defects per class
Use Case Velocity – the rate at which use cases are being achieved (# use cases realized and validation tested / unit time)
Work Item Velocity – the rate at which work items are being completed (# work items completed / unit time)
Test Coverage – # of source lines code tested / total number of source lines of code
Requirements velocity – # of requirements demonstrably represented in design, implementation, and test per unit time
Integration rejection rate – average # of submissions to continuous integration rejected due to breaking the build
Architectural volatility – # of changes made to the software architecture
Validation density – # of tested requirements / # of requirements
Validation test failure rate – # of validation tests that fail / total number of validation tests
Schedule variance – % difference between actual effort and estimated effort
Task variance – average % difference between actual effort and estimated effort per task

Jazz.net
Read more about the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management solutions on Jazz.net.

January 24, 2017

Systems Lifecycle Management and Systems Delivery with CLM

mats Design Portfolio, Designs, SLM-Designs, System Lifecycle Management Designs, SLM

Systems Lifecycle Management and Systems Delivery with CLM

In 2010 I led to the design of Systems Lifecycle Management and System Delivery scenario with Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM).

What is Systems Lifecycle Management and Systems Delivery with CLM

This is one of the scenarios in a family of CLM scenarios exploring the Lifecycle Management practices and how these practices are supported by the Rational tools built on Jazz, or integrated with Jazz.

As the foundational capabilities of Lifecycle Management (process integration between disciplines, traceability of artifact relationships, and project transparency and reporting) are common needs by any delivery project we use a shared approach to the CLM@scale scenario. The CLM@scale scenario outlines the project lifecycle, the roles in the project, and the common practices of a project. For the System Delivery scenario, we configure the System Engineering practices and System Delivery platform by extending the shared CLM@scale scenario. We explore the team workflows of a multi-disciplined project to deepen our understanding of how our systems customers can succeed with System Engineering practices using our Jazz products. We work from the ‘outside-in’ and ground the scenario in the challenges our customers face in delivering systems, or systems of systems, that integrate software, hardware, and electronics.

Design Objectives

The objectives of the System Delivery scenario are to Capture System Lifecycle Management and System Engineering workflows across a set of core products.

The shared objectives of the CLM@scale scenarios are focusing on

Getting started. The consumability and administration of our integrated Jazz solution.
Adopting practices. Adding agile delivery practices to team process
Task management. Everyone on the team gets assigned tasks
Planning and transparency. How status rolls up across projects
Automation. Explore how events can be used to create interesting life cycle automation
Measures. What reports and metrics are needed by the team to manage their project.

The System Delivery scenario extends the objectives by focusing on

System Lifecycle Management. Solution completeness for a project of multi-disciplined teams
System Engineering. How the team is performing system requirement engineering and architectural management with Jazz integrated tools.
OSLC adoption. Linking of OSLC resources across a System Lifecycle Management Solution using OSLC.
Traditional planning. How a traditional system delivery project is managed and integrated with an agile software team.
Product planning and delivery. How teams defined and deliver product part structures and variants.
System Delivery Measures. What measures are needed and how these are delivered to the teams through reports and dashboards

The Lifecycle

There are many representations of a project lifecycle. For example, a traditional sequential lifecycle, or an iterative lifecycle flow of incremental phases. System delivery teams tend to use the well-established ‘V-Model’ lifecycle models. Other system delivery teams adopt a spiral flow of incremental refinement. For this System Delivery scenario, we have taken a somewhat generalized approach to a project lifecycle by Flattening the V. This enables us to share a common scenario lifecycle flow across the CLM@scale and System Delivery scenarios. This generalized approach can support key lifecycle management aspects of both the commonly used V-model, and well as the iterative spiral model.

Looking at the V-Model we identify a set of key lifecycle phases; the system engineering phase that establishes the system requirements and architecture, the multi-disciplined engineering and validation teams that deliver the system through a sequence of milestones, the validation, acceptance, and release of the system delivery, and a continuous project management activity that leads the project to completion.

The lifecycle figure is using colors to identify the main focus and ownership of the lifecycle activities.

Gray is used to indicating deployment and configuration activities performed by project administrators and leads, for example, the Inspect and Adapt phase.
Blue is used to indicate activities performed by a cross-project team, for example, requirements analysis performed by the System Engineering team, or the project leadership team planning the project.
Green is used to indicate activities performed by a development team. Such activities may be from multiple disciplines, like iteration planning, development, and component testing.
Orange is used to indicate independent system tests and validation. Such activities are continuous through the lifecycle.
Purple is used to indicate asset management activities. This lifecycle mainly focused on the system hand-off phase.

The generalized lifecycle, shared by the CALM scenarios, recognizes these phases and lay’s them down along a sequential time axis as individual iterations. Taking this approach we can see commonalities in lifecycle management capabilities and needs between applications development and system delivery. We can also explore common workflows that apply to any lifecycle approach. Where exceptions are found we explore them as extensions to the CLM@scale scenario.

The lifecycle, captured in the figure below, generalizes on the lifecycle phases of an end-to-end system release. The phases focus on the system engineering, planning, development, and delivery phases.

The lifecycle starts with the project team preparing for the project (c.f. Inspect and Adapt in the figure). In this part, the project leads and administrators are preparing the system delivery platform, configuring the team practices and processes, and creating the required project areas across the System Delivery platform repositories.
Once launched, the project moves into a System Engineering phase (c.f. Iteration 0 in the figure). The concept defining the release objectives is approved and the system engineering team is analyzing stakeholder requirements, and defining the system requirements, system use-cases, and system architecture. During this phase, the project plans and dependencies between sub-systems and teams are established and approved. For projects delivering systems of systems, it’s vital to establish and track such dependencies as the system delivery may cover multiple disciplines like software, hardware, and electronics. Parts may also be delivered by 3rd parties or sub-contractors. In this scenario, we are focusing the story on the interactions between the project plan and the dependencies to a software subsystem.
The lifecycle proceeds with a sequence of iterations, or spirals, where the development teams are planning, developing, and integrating subsequent milestone releases of the system (c.f. Iteration 1 and 2 in the figure). The milestone releases are integrated and validated by an independent system verification team. As the project is prepared for its final release milestone the teams focus on release stabilization and system test (c.f. final Iteration in the figure below).
At the end of the lifecycle, the system is transitioned to production or deployment. The team finalizes the release by acceptance testing and signing off on the release quality.
As indicated in the figure below, aspects of teem steering are covered in each iteration. There is also project-level steering that measures and monitors the health of the project and the adoption rate of new development practices.

The System Delivery Organization

The system delivery scenario is using a common project organization and common project roles/persona from the CLM@scale scenario. The project is organized in teams of teams.

The system scenario extends the CLM scenario with a set of general teams and roles important to system delivery teams

System Engineering team(s) that is responsible for capturing, analyzing, and prioritizing the system requirements.
System Validation team(s) that is responsible for validating the integrated system against system requirements.
System disciplines, like software/mechanics/electronics, that is responsible for developing and delivering their sub-systems for system integration of the product.
The teams work from a common set of stakeholder requirements, system requirements, and an aligned project plan. The project will plan and track the schedule and resources for system integration and independent system test.

The System Delivery Platform Configuration

The scenario is using a core set of tools from the System Delivery platform that is built on Jazz or integrated with Jazz. These tools are

Rational DOORS Next Generation
Rational Rhapsody
Rational Team Concert
Rational Quality Manager

The System Delivery scenario is building out a richer end-to-end story from a core set of Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) scenarios. These core scenarios capture the essence of the resources, steps, and CLM links.

The Practices for System Delivery

The System Delivery with CALM scenario is based on the practices and tool guidance provided with MCIF. These practices apply specifically to System Engineering phases and to agility@scale practices. The practices apply to specific lifecycle phases as indicated below.

Some of the practices and workflows are common across the CLM@scale scenarios, others (indicated with bold text below) are specific for the System Delivery with CLM scenario.

Jazz.net
Read more about the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management solutions on Jazz.net.