Collaborative Working Environment. Robin Biesbroek, Paul Kiernan, Ray Richardson, Heinz-Martin Behrmann

Transcription

1 Collaborative Working Environment Robin Biesbroek, Paul Kiernan, Ray Richardson, Heinz-Martin Behrmann

2 What is a CWE? 1. A Collaborative Working Environment (CWE) supports members of a team in their individual and cooperative work. Research in CWE involves organisational, technical, ergonomic and social issues.

3 Why this contract The objective is to give the CDF a prototype server that enhances the use of the CDF and CE in later phases, and as such allows for: 1. Concurrent Reviews (Phase A/B: PRR, SRR) 2. Distributed Design sessions (Phase A/B) 3. Anomaly Investigation (independent of phase) A survey was done within ESA on traditional methods for these three activities, with a main focus on reviews. It was found that: 1. great quantities of information to digest and synthesise, as well as 2. great quantities of RIDs (Review Item Discrepancies) issued, each RID generating hours of work at many ESA and Subcontractor levels

4 General findings of survey 1. Information overload the sheer amount of information to be covered as part of the review can be overwhelming for individual reviewers 2. Big picture view it is very difficult for participants to maintain a big picture view in relation to progress through what is often a mammoth task 3. Knowledge Sharing very often multiple reviewers unearth the same issues or at least related issues. It is very difficult for members of the review team to be aware of each other s activities 4. Finding and Communicating with the right people there is effectively no support to help participant find and communicate with team members who may be able to answer questions this may relate to a Reviewer looking to the Supplier team member responsible a particular deliverable or a Supplier looking to talk to a Reviewer about a particular RID 5. Too many trivial RIDs raised perhaps related to the previous point it s been identified that the majority of RIDs raised are trivial in nature (seeking clarification on something or relating to grammatical errors). 6. Absence of meeting management tools to visualise the activity focus; track decisions, issues, actions; send alerts and notes 7. Multiple RID databases exist 8. Tools to support preparation for reviews don t exist. 9. Industry partners use their own analytical tools 10. Standards for on-boarding external document archives and data don t exist or are not enforced. 11. Reviewed items in early phases are all documents, even when a model would be easier to understand and review and be more representative. 12. RIDs and comments are spread across Excel, Word, , PDFs. 13. Expectations in relation to RIDs it was reported on a number of occasions that Reviewers in particular often feel it s their job to raise RIDs, in some cases, leading to unnecessary or trivial RIDs

5 CWE tasks 1. Team leader shall be able to create projects. A project could be a review, an anomaly investigation or a design project 2. Within projects, Team Leaders be able to create sessions. A session could be a review session or a (distributed) design session 3. For each project, a team list is entered. Access rights are given by the team leader 4. All users are able to update documentation, for example review documentation, progress reports, requirements documentation by the customer 5. All users shall have access to a project calendar 6. Users shall be able to create and assign tasks, and update tasks when applicable (e.g. close a task) 7. Users shall be able to review documents and add comments or questions to the documents 8. Comments in reports shall have the possibility to be converted to RIDs 9. Comments with question marks in reports shall have the possibility to be converted to a list of questions 10. Each project shall have a dedicated forum 11. For each session it shall be possible to create notes within the CWE 12. A dashboard shall be visible when logging on, that immediately shows the status of the projects. E.g. for reviews the dashboard shall show an overview of total number of RIDs, number of closed and open RIDs, classification of RIDs.

6 Projects and sessions 1. With the CWE we can create projects site for each project we would use the CWE for (and for each contractor), for example: a. e.deorbit Astrium b. e.deorbit Thales 2. In each project, we can create a site for review sessions, for distributed design sessions and/or for anomaly investigation 3. Within a Review we can have different sessions. These sessions can be: a. Working (distributed design) sessions with industry b. Small reviews such as Mission Baseline Review c. Sessions within a large review such as a PRR or SRR

7 CWE Sharepoint interface

8 Concurrent Review Process

9 Creation of RIDs 1. Comments inserted in PDF using annotations 2. Function in CWE to automatically convert these to: a. Questions (if the comment ends with a? ) b. RIDs (otherwise) 3. Automatic numbering, automatic insertion in database, automatic notification to chairman and project manager

10 Distributed Design sessions

11 Anomaly Investigation

12 Conclusions 1. CWE up and running by end e.deorbit phase B1 will be the first study to use the CWE a. Tests have been done with STE-QUEST 3. e.deorbit phase A has indicated difficulties with VC with contractors a. Not many VC rooms at contractors premises b. WebEx not allowed at contractors premises c. Skype not allowed at ESA 4. VC function will be implemented in CWE