Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Understanding System Development with UML 2.

Student Exercises

by Mike O’Docherty, Manchester University, UK

Edited Kean University

Milestones - Introduction

Each Milestone has five stages:

• Read: Read the milestone.

• Plan: Decide what the tasks are and whether there should be more than one iteration.

• Organize: Put tasks in order or in parallel and assign responsible persons.

• Do: Perform the tasks themselves.

• Reflect: Think about what’s been achieved.

At the start of each milestone, every member of the team should read through the milestone to

get a feel for what needs to be done. Then the team should spend around ten minutes planning

and organizing.

Genesis:

Before you start producing a software system, you need to understand the business that will use

the software. For a large business, you may only be able to model the area of the business that

your system will automate.

Use case-modeling, in a simplified form, is a good way of understanding and documenting the

way a business operates. A business use case model comprises a list of actors, the use cases

themselves and a glossary.

Remember that in business modeling, as in any other iterative phase, there is no strict order in

which to do things. Therefore, this milestone (and most of the following ones) should be viewed

as steps in a first iteration. Read the entire milestone before you start and then feel free to

reorder the steps or perform them in parallel, according to the taste of your team members.

If you need to brainstorm a use case, try to use communication diagrams or activity diagrams

to sketch out ideas.

Business Modeling

Milestone 1
Objectives

At the end of this milestone, you should be able to:

• Create and maintain a project workbook.

• Choose and assign team roles.

• Start a glossary.

• Understand the business and system requirements from an informal problem statement.

• Work with customers to understand the business.

• Identify and describe business actors.

1.1 CREATING A PROJECT WORKBOOK (see text sections 5.1, 5.2)

Take an empty binder and label it ‘Project Workbook’ (choose a team name at this point and

write that on the binder too). This binder will contain all the official documentation of your

project team, so that you will always know where to look for the latest detail on any part of the

system. As the work progresses, you can add new documents to your workbook, update existing

documents or add entirely new versions of documents. Don’t throw any documents away – it’s

useful to maintain a history trail. It’s also a good idea to designate one person as ‘Workbook

Keeper’ whose job it is to ensure that the workbook always gets a copy of new or updated

documents. (The Workbook Keeper should also make sure that every team member gets a

photocopy of the completed workbook at the end of the project.) Ideally, we would like the

maintenance of the workbook to be automated as much as possible – using some sort of CASE

tool perhaps. However, for the purposes of this milestone, paper will be sufficient – it would take

too long to learn how to use a Project management CASE tool.

1.2 DECIDING TEAM ROLES

Add a divider labeled ‘Team Roles’ to create a new section in your binder to hold the results of

this part of the milestone.

1.2.1 Invent Roles

Before you go any further, you should invent and assign some more team roles.

We already have Workbook Keeper and, implicitly, ‘Team Member’. However, you will be

working to tight time limits so you must organize your team in order to avoid chaos (and to

make sure that you have a solution to each milestone).

• Project manager = Someone who makes sure that:

– the team produces plans and schedules

– everyone is clear what their responsibilities are

– progress is reviewed regularly.

• Time Keeper = Someone who makes sure that the team keeps to the schedule.

• Scribe = Someone who makes sure that the results of brainstorming are recorded on

paper (for the Workbook Keeper to put into the workbook).

• Glossary Keeper = Someone who is responsible for keeping the electronic project glossary

up to date, adding definitions for new pieces of jargon as they arise and cross referencing

terms with other documentation.

1.2.2 Assign Roles

You should share your selected roles (fairly) and record them in the Team Roles section of

your workbook. You should rotate roles regularly – perhaps on a per milestone basis.

1.3 ADDING WORKBOOK SECTIONS FOR THE BUSINESS MODEL

Add a ‘Business Model’ section to your workbook to hold the results of milestones 1 & 2, except

for the glossary.

When adding items to your workbook, leave lots of room for each entry. This will allow you to

modify or add comments to individual items while you iterate, without creating new versions of

documents. For example, leave half a page for each actor, two whole sides for each use case

and so on.

1.4 MAINTAINING A GLOSSARY (see text 6.4.2)

Add a separate ‘Glossary’ section to your workbook.

1.4.1 Add New Terms and Synonyms

Every time a piece of business-specific jargon crops up, add a short description of it to

the glossary. Also, every time you discover a synonym for an ‘official’ term, add that too.

1.4.2 Cross Reference the Business Model

When you add an item to the glossary that relates directly to the business model, make

a note of that alongside the item.

or reserves car models.

1.5 CONSIDERING THE PROJECT INITIATION

Your customers have given you a Project initiation document in the form of a request discussion

document (use the Request for System Services form).

Fill in the Request for Systems Services document AS IF you were customer management, from

their perspective and make sure that you understand it.

1.6 DETERMINE THE PROBLEMS

1.6.1 Fill in the Problem Statement matrix with short phrases listing the problems you can

identify in the organization and its operations

1.6.2 When are they needed to be solved?

1.7 DETERMINE THE ORGANIZATION'S BENEFITS (see text 6.2)

1.7.1 What is the mission of this organization?

1.7.2 How would a new information system benefit the organization?

1.7.3 Write a short paragraph for each of the mission, and the benefits

1.8 PRODUCING A BUSINESS ACTOR LIST (see text 6.4.1)

Write down all the human and/or subsystem roles in the organization and its business.

Remember to concentrate just on the existing business, not on how the business will operate

when you have built the new information system. If necessary, reduce your list of business

actors to a relevant set. (Any rejected actors can still be synonyms in your glossary.) Add a

short (one sentence) description for each actor.

N.B. As the milestones progress, remember that you are not the customer. So don’t make any

assumptions about the customer’s business, instead, ask them! (re-read the business scenario)