Just starting....

[JCarroll]

Greetings everyone,
We are a shop of system integrators in a fairly narrow domain  and want to improve various aspects of how we work. I downloaded the trial today and have 30 days to make a case to my boss.  I'm pretty sure that what we need to do is possible, just wanna make sure.

1. Standardize our docs - I'm sure the the rtf templates will be key here.
2. Create domain specific classes and objects - A UML profile I'm thinking.
3. Harvest and re use patterns that we see - UML Patterns
4. Manage requirements and make sure that what we need to know is captured.
5. Create template projects that bring it all together to get guys going fast.

As I mention I'm pretty sure it can all be done (only #5 really worries me) and I'm excited to get started.   Any tips you have would be great.

Thanks,

PS: I already bought Peter's book.  

[Peter Doomen]

Good Luck with your undertaking! It's not easy but worth the effort.

For documentation, also take a look at the html export.

P.
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Book on EA: http://bit.ly/EATricks
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[Robert Sheridan]

I have introduced EA into various organisations.  Here is a brain dump of things to get to grips with at a general level:
1. The repository is the source of knowledge, not the documents generated from it - there is always more info in the repository than in the docs.
2. In a team it is a more disciplined way of working as you all need to work in the same way.
3. Use baselines and the audit log to track changes, dont create copies in the model for posterity
4. Be prepared to refine your EA usage
5. Start simple there is a lot there.
6. Collaborative working is SO much easier with EA.
7. The model view can give you short cuts into your repository

The help, learning centre, tutorials and white papers are all very helpful.

Go for it

[Peter Doomen]

Wise words, Robert. The overall advice I would give is to be prepared to keep on learning and improving. You can only do that by regularly confronting other people with your work. The worst models are those made in an ivory tower. :-)

P.
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Book on EA: http://bit.ly/EATricks
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[Abdel]

Hello Everybody  ,
i just read in your deedback, some words which interest me, and I think that u can help me to resolve or to give a opinion to this problem that confrotes me :

What are the best practises for managing a large number of parallel branches EA within an agile project : 3 versions of application in parallel + sprints in each version?

We work in a DBMS MySQL, and the proposed solution is the use of a repository with manuals reports branch between repository when needed. This solution works but its difficult to maitain and requires careful monitoring   :-/

DO u think that using SVN can add value? or do u have other solutions?

Thank you in advance for your answers ...
Abdel

[qwerty]

Regarding CM read here: http://www.sparxsystems.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1352126335

q.

[Sunshine]

All good advice provided so far. If working with a group of people on the same repository its worth mentioning a tip to prevent accidental overwriting of each others work. It can cause friction in a team when someone overwrites another person's diagram. To prevent this enable security via the menu Project>Security>Enable Security. Then enable locking via the menu Project>Security>Require User Lock to Edit. You'll need to set up user names with passwords which is good for auditing.
It does mean a slight inconvenience in that you have to lock elements before being able to edit them but it saves some grief  
As you are embarking on a reasonably large learning curve and wisely starting with a 30 day trial I suggest looking at this feature later once you are ready to trial multi-user repository.

Good luck

[Sunshine]

Not sure if you've discovered it as some folk don't notice at first. As well as this forum there is a community site with white papers, tutorials etc. that provides a wealth of additional information to the user guide.
The link can be found on the left hand side of the sparx website home page
http://community.sparxsystems.com/
 8-)