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CS 501: Software Engineering

Fall 2000

Lecture 3

(a) Feasibility Study (b) Requirements Definition

Administration

Assignment 1: Look on the course web site

Project teams:

• If you have definitely chosen a project, please notify the Teaching Assistants with the names of your team members
• If you do not have a team you can meet after class
• Monday's recitations session will be to help the people who do not have projects form teams
• We may ask teams to add extra members
• A Teaching Assistant will be added to each team.

Feasibility Study

A feasibility study leads to a decision:

go ahead do not go ahead think again

In production projects, the feasibility study often leads to a budget request.

In research, a feasibility study is often in the form of a proposal.

CS 501: Client

In CS 501, you have two clients:

• The client for the project
• The professor for the course

Can you satisfy them both?

Potential Benefits

Why are you doing this project?

Examples

• Create a marketable product
• Improve the efficiency of an organization
• Control a system that is too complex to control manually
• New or improved service
• Safety or security - Get a good grade on CS 501

Resources

Examples: CS 501

Staff: 5 to 7 students, with some help. How many hours per week? What skills do people have?

Time: Must be completed by end of semester, including operational system, documentation, presentation

Equipment and software: What special needs are there?

Client: Will the client be sufficiently available and helpful?

How to Minimize Risk?

CS 501 Projects

• Several target levels of functionality: required, desirable, optional
• Visible software process: intermediate deliverables
• Good communication within team and with Teaching Assistant Good processes lead to good software Good processes reduce risk

Feasibility Report

A written document

• For a general audience: client, financial management, technical management, etc.
• Short enough that everybody reads it
• Long enough that no important topics are skipped

In CS 501, I am looking for a well written, well presented document.

Example: Library of Congress

(A Partial Failure)

Outline Description

The Library of Congress requires a repository system to store and make accessible very large amounts of highly varied material over long periods of time.

Chronology

1993-94 CNRI carries out research on architectures for

digital libraries

1995-97 CNRI implements prototype repository for

Library of Congress

1998 CNRI and Library of Congress carry out requirements

definition

Storage and Representation of Complex

Objects

Data Several representations: thumbnail image reference image archival image

Metadata

Each representation may have its own metadata

Repository: Research Achievements

1. CORBA implementation of repository access protocol.
2. Integration of persistent naming through handle system.
3. Use of structural metadata to describe complex objects, elementary typology.
4. Access management framework and implementation.
5. Applet-based middleware for user interfaces.
6. Information visualization program to view the structure of large collections.

Bad Discoveries During Prototype

• Resistance to change within Library of Congress
• Technical weakness of Library of Congress
• Gaps in CNRI architecture

Mistakes

• Confusion of objectives (research and implementation)
• Failure to involve all stakeholders
• Over-ambitious (no proper feasibility study)