how to manage a model over multiple phases

[ali.king]

I'm working on a project that will deliver in multiple phases

hence in release 1, i will have a mixture of new and existing components.

as the project moves from one release/phase to the next, some of the components in rel 1, will effectively change state from new to existing

any thoughts on the best way to manage this

also - i need to work concurrently on rel1.new and rel2.existing so don't think baselines will do it for me

[Geert Bellekens]

If you are thinking about branching, the only advise I can give is: DON'T.

What I would do is to use the phase and version fields in the elements to distinguish the different phases, or if you need it more granularly use something like tagged values to indicate the phase.

Look into Diagram Filters to make some nice phase 1/phase 2 diagrams.

Geert

[ali.king]

not sure that helps or i haven't explained myself properly.

phase 1 - lets say i have 1 component that is existing and i want to add 1 new component

so i can create a diagram, drop my 2 components on,
comp1.status = existing
comp2.status = new

i am also working on phase 2, where i want to add comp3,
but i want to show comp2 as being 'existing' in phase2
if i change any attributes, be they tags or standard attribute, surely i'm just going to change the comp2.status to new for everything?

[Geert Bellekens]

Ali,

Why don't you use the phase field then?

Geert

[ali.king]

because i can still only have 1 value in phase at any one time?

diag 1, phase 1, comp 1, set phase = 1, set status = new

diag 2, phase 2, re-use comp 1, set phase = 2, set status = existing

surely now, comp 1 only has status = existing and phase = 2, in both diags?

or am I just being thick?

[Fred Bevan]

You could use tagged values but then you cannot reference these in the diagram filter. My recommendation would be to use the Key Words field. This would allow you to put in multiple entries such as:

Phase1-Created,Phase2-Modified,Phase3-Reused

Once you have done this, you could have a diagram filter such as:

Keywords Contains Phase1-Created

[DanG83616]

If a component isn't existing yet then it is still new. When it exists then is exists in every configuration it is used. It seems odd that a component would be new and existing at the same time. If your goal is to indicate which phase a component is expected to reach the "existing" state, then phase would seem like a good attribute. However, you might just do better keeping a separate plan listing the which components you expect to complete in which phase and not try to attach the project plan attributes directly to components.

I have a model for each component and include those in models that use them. Each component is independently version controlled as are the assembly models. The trick to this approach is that you need to make sure your subcomponents are encapsulated. If you start defining a component by the other components it interacts this approach won't work. You can avoid doing that. Assemblies are made up of instances of components and those instances go in the assembly model so there is no need to have the classifier definitions referencing each other. I don't use the version, state and phase attributes but if I did I'd make sure they apply to the artifacts themselves and not the system or project within which they are utilized.

I probably didn't directly help but maybe gave you some ideas to consider.

Dan

[Fred Bevan]

I am not saying that a component can be both new and existing at the same time.

The approach that I have suggested in my previous post was to provide a way to record a component’s states related to specific projects or phases.  

The value in doing this is that it is that you can filter diagrams to include all components but highlight only ones that were created or changed in a particular release. This information could also be used to filter reports.

Example:
In the example below, all components on the diagram will be greyed out unless they were created or modified in Phase 2.

   Entry in Key Words field:
Phase1-Created,Phase2-Modified

   Diagram filters:
Keywords Contains Phase2-Created
Keywords Contains Phase2-Modified

[DanG83616]

Oops. Fred, I should have addressed my last post to Ali. I didn't make my point clear. If the project is to overlap phases then a component that is new in one phase might need to be identified as existing in the next all at the same time. Fred's solution would address that by labeling the components with project information.

I'd recommend against labeling components with project information. Another way is to organize folders in the project browser to hold components by phase. Place the component in the phase that it will be developed (phase 0 holds preexisting components, perhaps). That would allow you to use the Phase field to indicate the status of the component and the folders to generate reports indicating component state according to plan.

I get picky about mixing project information into the component models because I reuse the models in more than one project. If the components will only be used in the one project then it probably doesn't hurt to mingle project attributes with component attributes. In that case, Fred's suggestion is less complicated and should work fine.

Dan

[ali.king]

thanks for the replies and thoughts, keep them coming

I don't think I have the answer that I was hoping for, but if nothing else, I think it reinforces that I haven't missed something obvious

ta