Links to Q&A's / Source Documentation

[vodzurk]

Hi All,

My first post here was earlier today, and it's been incredibly insightful, so I hope I'm not being pushy by asking two questions in a day!  (I expect after this I'll have a lot to get on with exploring).

As a prior developer for 15-ish years (overlapping 3-5 years as analyst), most of my tasks have been along the lines of "go figure out what the customer wants, write it down, then make it and deliver it".  As a result, one of the main sources of documentation I collect is emails with dozens (or hundreds) of numbered queries.  These can Ping-Pong a good few times between myself and the customer.  Some projects have a number of stakeholders.

A hungry example...


PG-1:   Bananas on every page
        You specified the app must show a banana on every page, would the top of each page be suitable?
        PG: The more bananas the better!  We love them!
        MM: Apologies, I didn't quite make my question clear... Could you specify with a "yes" or "no" if your
        banana requirement is suitably met by putting one at the top of the page?
        PG: Yes, that would be great, but we also would appreciate a few elsewhere, the more the better!
PG-1.1: Bananas everywhere
        In PG-1 you specify you want bananas elsewhere... please could you elaborate where and how many this
        would be?
        BD: I'm PG's manager, please ignore this request, a single banana at the top of each page is fine.


Up until now, I would maintain a word document with all these replies in, for tracing back to exact original sources of what was asked for, when, and by whom.

My question is... could EA represent such lists of Q&A's? They wouldn't necessarily be requirements in themselves, often just "facts" or preferences delivered by an SME.  These facts could be associated with the requirement, but might also exist outside as a complete set (report) as well as broken up... this could allow me to keep my method of Q&A's, but then directly reference into each relevant Q from the requirement.

Or would it be best to abandon the source and add each Q&A into the description for each requirement... which makes it tough when its a more "extra info/background" style thing prior to the evolution of a solid requirement(s).

It's been a long day.  I'm hungry.  And I forgot to bring my usual banana to munch at this time in the afternoon.

[PeterHeintz]

There is an EA feature called element discussion that might provide you what you need. In theory if your partners would have access to your model you would not need any document or e-mail at all.

However to be honest, I have not jet seriously used that feature (does not mean that it is useless/ I just have no experience on that feature).

[vodzurk]

There is an EA feature called element discussion that might provide you what you need. In theory if your partners would have access to your model you would not need any document or e-mail at all.

However to be honest, I have not jet seriously used that feature (does not mean that it is useless/ I just have no experience on that feature).

Cheers!

Just given it a quick blast.  Looks like a contributor can post feedback on any element, which can then have states.

However... I'm probably gonna be the only one for now who has EA.  Certainly (hopefully) until I can shout its praise and introduce it to others .  But these Discussions seem linked to individual users, not linkable by myself as an attribute style value for each stakeholder.

It doesn't look like the discussions feature would be applicable, since I'd be doing the tracing unfortunately... plus the traceability doesn't look to be what I'd want... EA-Discussion elements appear to be linked to specific element.

Mmm... I suspect this may be a daft / dead-end path to be on.

[PeterHeintz]

Yes in EA any kind of those things is somehow related to an element, however a element can also be a package containing lots of elements.
Anyhow, if it does not suite to your needs, just forget it.

[qwerty]

I have used issue elements (from the toolbox) and linked those to where they belong. That gives a pretty neat picture. Additionally (for you in the future) you can look into MDGs to make custom issue elements that fit YOUR requirements (namely the modeling requirements). Do not mix up with the issue/tasks from EA's reference data. They are some EA-speciality and are not real UML elements. I could start arguing, but will just state here that I favor UML elements over any reference data.

q.

[Glassboy]

If you look at the properties of the requirement element you'll see a section Related | Files.  Ideally your emails are going to live in a system of record like an email archive or an EDRMS.  This should give you a permanent ID that you can use to link to via the "web address".

[Dermot]

If the Discussion option is close to what you require then maybe can look at using the Team Review feature.
Both of these are accessible in the Free EA Lite Edition - so long the users have access to your repository (i.e. via cloud).
See: http://sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/12.1/introduction/ea_lite.html
In the simplest usage the Team Review can be a document inside EA covering your points, but it can also cover a lot more.

[vodzurk]

If the Discussion option is close to what you require then maybe can look at using the Team Review feature.
Both of these are accessible in the Free EA Lite Edition - so long the users have access to your repository (i.e. via cloud).
See: http://sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/12.1/introduction/ea_lite.html
In the simplest usage the Team Review can be a document inside EA covering your points, but it can also cover a lot more.

Hi Dermot,

Thanks for the suggestion.  I love that it can potentially be opened up via EA-Lite for outside involvement, yet still usable by myself to keep note of where the information came from.

It looks pretty good... Two questions I have here are:

• Can this be compiled out to a single document based upon each topic?
• Is there a way to include the links from Requirement <-> Team Review in the Traceability Pane?

I've given it a trial with the same scenario as above, which has landed me with:

Although the traceability element is not in the Traceability Pane (is there a way to include this?), there does appear to be a reference inside Requirement> Related > Links, which I imagine could be of more use when I get (hopefully) adept with EA:

(Apologies if the images are dead, only just got my WordPress site up, I'm aiming to keep notes on things as I learn ).

I'll also try out the suggestions above by qwerty/glassboy soon...

[Dermot]

I am not sure what you mean with point one - are your referring to generating a Document?
With point 2 You can set up Hyperlinks to Elements from within the document - Highlight a word - Context menu | Create | Link to Existing Element. But in reverse as there is no direct reference inside the Document that an Element can refer to - so this is not supported.

[vodzurk]

I am not sure what you mean with point one - are your referring to generating a Document?
With point 2 You can set up Hyperlinks to Elements from within the document - Highlight a word - Context menu | Create | Link to Existing Element. But in reverse as there is no direct reference inside the Document that an Element can refer to - so this is not supported.

Hi Dermot,

Thanks for the RM with EA paper... I'll chew up some trees this afternoon with that (no version control - can't see what's changed).

With regards my point #2, it was in reference to the Traceability pane... for example, in the above bananas example, REQ008 is selected.  The Traceability shows REQ007 is part of it... but the Traceability pane doesn't show any link to the referenced Team Review document.  I'm very much a newbie, so need to learn standard EA usage though, so am probably looking at it from the wrong angle.

With regards my point #1, I was wondering if there would be a way to combine a Team Review "node" and its child documents into a single document... so in my example below, to drop out Q&As.rtf if that node is exported, which would contain PG-1, PG-1.1, PG-2.  Again, more than likely a newbie issue .