Author Topic: Feature Overload  (Read 6944 times)

tkadom

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Feature Overload
« on: August 19, 2003, 06:51:30 am »
I am currently evaluating EA 3.51, and while I am very impressed with the features and pricepoint, I have some questions concerning the overall direction of the product.

I have walked through some of the features which I consider ancillary to my uses of EA, and although I could see a minimal benefit of providing built in features for project management, test script tracking, defect tracking, and cost estimation, I think most people would prefer using existing products for those purposes.  

It certainly is nice to have a single point of entry into all those systems, but I would want EA to consider the solution as heterogenous, rather than providing out of the box functionality.  In other words, while it is useful to have the ability to enter people, resources, and tasks into EA, it would be even more useful if I could import the ones I have in MS project.  I would make the same point for defects, cost estimation, etc.

It is certainly appealing to see a project plan come visually alive in EA, but if this occurs at the expense of doing all my project planning in EA, I would prefer to pass.  Linking elements from my UML diagram to a project plan would be useful, but it would probably require alot of care and maintenance and quickly fall out of sync.    

From the report generated with the built in defect tracking tool, I can tell that there is still a bit of work that needs to go into that side of the product.  My report text ran way outside of the table format and looked very garbled.  It was certainly not something that I would want to generate to hardcopy for review.

The core functionality, on the other hand, is incredible.   Keep up the great work.  Maybe you can give me an inkling of where you are going with all the additional features that IMHO clutter the product.

Tim Kadom


JourneymanDave

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2003, 02:40:21 pm »
I would agree with the viewpoint that many folks will want to continue using their established products for the project/resource management, defect management and estimation functionality.  

I would also agree that there is not sufficient integration or data interchange capability within EA to productively use the external, purpose-specific tools and also EA together for this purpose (I do think the XMI interchange is OK for modelling aspects though).

However, I would put my two cents in for folks (only plural because I assume I'm not the only one)  that are compelled by the prospect of having a single tool that is sufficiently capable to pull off multiple jobs, including project/resource management.  For me personally, I generally work in two scenarios:

1) On projects of sufficient scale and finanicial investment to justify it, I work with a dedicated Project Manager or PMO who uses MS Project, Primarvera, etc., a QA analyst using their own tools, and I use the modelling and design tools of my choice (mostly EA these days) separately.  
2) On projects of small-medium scale and financial investment, I take on the add'l role of PM and handle the administrative and tracking tasks myself.  

Over two smaller project in the past six months, I've found that the admittedly stripped-down functionality in question is adequate for me to do a good job.  Only adequate, but for these projects that's been enough for me to do my job thoroughly and timely.  

I should note for full disclosure, that my current employer does not purchase many enterprise-level tools, such as the Rational, Embarcadaro or AllFusion products, so these aren't available to me anymore.  MS Project are Visio are the tools that are officially available to me.  While these are borderline usable tools, they aren't very comprehensive and can only pull off one or two narrow sets of tasks.  I was unwilling to attempt to do my job anymore without some add'l tools and could not afford licenses for the aforementioned products out my of my own pocket.  This was my impetus for looking at new tools in the first place.

One of the things in particular that attracted me to EA was that it clearly has more full-lifecycle functionality than anything else I've seen at any price point, much less at the very reasonable price point at which it is available.  As an architect and sometimes-project manager or analyst on my projects, it's of significant benefit to me to have a single tool using a single repository for all of my artifacts and documents.  I only have to learn one interface, one set of toolset conventions, and I have only one repository I have to report against.   It's pretty tidy and convenient.

For the full-time architect in me, I find the core modeling & design functionality is pretty good, which seems to be a common sentiment.  For the sometimes PM or analyst, I find the "ancillary" functionality is a bit of a mixed bag, but on the balance perfectly usable.  I think this is where some folks may differ.

My bottom-line recommendation for other EA users would be to consider using EA's core functionality for all projects, but to be careful to try the "ancillary" functionality on small projects before attempting on a truly enterprise-scale project.  If EA can't do the trick for these "ancillary" tasks on larger projects, it's no problem to scale its use back to the core and use more robust external tools for the other pieces.

My recommendation to Sparks would be to please continue to include these ancillary functions in the EA product, not to segment them off into a separate product.  While I'd like to see them mature a bit more (second priority to the core functionality, of course), I'm willing to accept that an all-in-one tool will probably never be as robust as a purpose-specific tool.

For me the all-in-one nature is a significant product differentiator, and I value the benefit that it provides me on certain types of engagements.

Javier

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2003, 03:08:39 pm »
I've been evaluating EA for some time now, on and off, as I have time, and I find some of tkadom arguments compelling.

The core functionality for the product is great, but I think that EA is trying to be all things to everybody.  Some of the shortcomings that I've seen are in "transitional" features--e.g., you cannot get help in a dialog box by selecting the [?] button anymore, but you can get help by selecting Help.

While I appreciate the additional features--and the price point--, I think that they make the product intimidating if you do not have a few miles with the UML specification and a software development process, and I think it would be acceptable--at least I would pay if it is in a range such as EA--to have other product out of the "ancillary" functionality (something in the terms of requirements management and project management, for example).

On the other hand, I understand that the bandwidth for Sparx Systems may be limited to polish the ancillary features that JourneyManDave mentions.

Regards,

Javier
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fwoolz

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2003, 01:38:06 pm »
Hello All,

My tuppence...

I'm currently working on a process that uses EA for a lot of the project tracking stuff in addition to basic UML modeling.  And, while I agree that single-purpose tools like Project and Primavera are much more powerful, it is possible (with a little- or a lot- of database/automation programming) to link EA to any of a number of third-party products.  A back-burner project of mine is an EA toolkit app that provides some of this functionality... maybe some others would be interested in helping to move it to the front?

Cheers,
Fred Woolsey

BTW- Wassup with "pricepoint"?  Waddeva happend to just plain old "price"?  ;)
« Last Edit: August 22, 2003, 01:41:04 pm by fwoolz »
Fred Woolsey
Interfleet Technology Inc.

Always be ready to laugh at yourself; that way, you beat everyone else to the punch.


SpoonsJTD

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2003, 02:30:45 pm »
I think a compromise would be if Sparx added the concept of plug-ins to the EA architecture and refactored many of the non-UML-specific features (project tracking, for example) into plug-ins that could be turned on or off.  A plug-in architecture would also make it easier to create extensions to EA that would facilitate interop with the external software systems described in the earlier posts.  

I am, however, biased because I would very much like to see a plug-in architecture added to EA for other reasons than just those described here.

JourneymanDave

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2003, 04:55:44 pm »
I've got to admit that I like the plug-in line of thought.  This seems to work out pretty well in Eclipse.  That might be a way to accomplish both goals of keeping the core product tidy, while providing an offering for folks that are a little more enterprising (that can also be read as "budgetarily deficient") and willing to accept 80% functionality in an integrated product.

Interesting idea.

JonK

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2003, 02:21:17 am »
Hi Folks,

I think you need to be careful of the plugin approach, the eclipse IDE beats a lot of editors I have used BUT with a plugin approach the base level system becomes a tangle of contributed code, if there is a bug in one plugin you are left performing version management on the IDE, often having to re-install the base and each plugin at a time to make sure it works.

Cheers

Jon K

tkadom

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Re: Feature Overload
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2003, 06:48:06 pm »
Nice to see other peoples thoughts on the matter.  I still think EA is an incredible tool at the pricepoint, and when my evaluation is over I will probably fork over the registration :)

Tim

« Last Edit: August 25, 2003, 06:49:20 pm by tkadom »