Problem StatementSTARS Project15-499c Advanced Software Engineering Spring 2000 Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 IntroductionWith the increasing complexity of systems such as automobiles, trucks, airplanes, trains or power plants, access to maintenance procedures at the place of work is essential. Current maintenance procedures for these systems are costly and inefficient. Information quickly goes out-of-date and maintenance manuals are often only available as hardcopy. This results in an extreme amount of wasted paper as well as transportation difficulties. The ProblemThe F/A-18 "Hornet" Program Office, PMA-265, has been asked to reduce the cost for logistics support and maintenance while improving or at least maintaining current aircraft readiness. The cost of electronic data required for the aircraft, especially when it has already been authored in a proprietary format or is available only in paper form, is enormous. Some solutions to the problem of reducing costs are available. For example, an Automated Conversion System (ACS), when coupled to an Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) authoring tool, lowers technical manual conversion cost significantly. This process has allowed the program office to lower by more than 33% the cost of converting its F/A-18 C and D organizational-level technical manuals to IETMs. However, the program office cannot afford to do the same for F/A-18 A and B technical manuals and related data (e.g., logbooks) because they are all paper-based documents, i.e., not available in electronic form. IETM authoring is also done by the OEMs and Boeing (for the aircraft itself) using a standard authoring system and data direct from the engineering CAD systems used in the manufacturing design process. ProposalIn this project we are asking you to build a system called STARS. STARS attempts to reduce the cost of converting paper based technical manuals to IETMs. To address the problem, we propose the improvement of the conversion process converning the development and managment of interactive electronic technical manuals. The process of developing and managing of IETMs itself consists of three activities: 1) authoring of IETMs from the paper technical manuals, 2) storage of IETMs in a database and 3) authoring and release workflow management. The authoring of IETMs from paper documents is to be done in two stages. The digitizing stage is to be done by and American Native firms (West Electronics). They will use text and graphic conversion tools and apply QC techniques to produce electronic data, which is then converted via IETM authoring systems. The White House, Congress, and the Native American Marketing Corporation (NAMCOR) are backing this effort to provide meaningful employment for and American Natives without leaving their current communities. ScenariosPreliminary AnalysisA preliminary analysis of the problem has already been performed which has resulted in a set of functional and nonfunctional requirements describing the functions to be performed by the system and a list of system limitations outlining specific constraints. We expect that the requirements will undergo several incremental and iterative changes as a result of the analysis phase. Functional RequirementsThe STARS System must support the following functions:
Nonfunctional RequirementsWhen designing STARS, the following constraints must be taken into account:
System LimitationsWhen designing STARS, the following will be true of the developed system:
Target EnvironmentIt is expected that the development environment at Carnegie Mellon will be used for demonstrating the prototype. The target environment will be the reservation in Montana where West Electronics is located. The system will run on desktop machines. Development EnvironmentThe developers of the STARS System may make use of the facilities offered in the clusters on the CMU Campus as well as the Software Engineering Laboratory located in Smith Hall, room 234. While the clusters are shared with other students taking other courses, the resources at the software engineering lab are to be used solely for the development of the STARS System. The Software Engineering Laboratory offers a set of 9 PCs running Windows NT and Linux as well as 6 Macintosh running MacOS 8.6. These machines are connected via a local Ethernet. The following software tools are used during development. Lotus Notes.This is a groupware tool, designed to facilitate communication between members of a large, geographically diverse group working on the same project. It provides persistent document storage and address book functionality. Inherent security features allow content to be provided over the Internet, with complex permission options. JavaDoc.This tool generates API documentation from the comments of Java source code. The documentation is provided in HTML format. ACSACS (Automated Conversion System) converts legacy technical manuals into IETMs. ACS consists of a series of automated steps that minimize the human interaction necessary to convert paper-based documents into IETMs. More information on ACS can be found at http://www.lmco.com:80/lmis/level4/acs.html. GCSGCS (Graphical Conversion System) converts the images and tables from legacy technical manuals into parsable SGML which can then be incorporated into ACS (see above) to provide the full conversion of the technical manual. Both GCS and ACS can convert tables in technical manuals to SGML. GCS will be responsible for this conversion in the STARS system. AIMSSAIMSS (Advanced Integrated Maintenance Support System) is a tool for constructing and authoring IETM databases, maintaining the databases, and using the databases for the delivery of information to a user. The AIMSS authoring environment provides the tools used to create, delete, modify, and maintain all aspects of an IETM database development project. More information on AIMSS can be found at http://www.htsc.com/AIMSS/AIMSS.HTML. ContactsThe clients for the project are Lt. Matt Herl from the F-18 program office, Mark Kramer and Raymond LeBeau from the Navy Carderock Lab. The client liaison is Dick Martin from Carnegie Mellon University. Consultants for some of the problems associated with the subsystems and development tools are also available. The consultants are:
Client Acceptance TestThe client is willing to discuss any of the requirements specified in this document. During the requirements analysis phase of the project, the functional and nonfunctional requirements of an acceptable prototype will be re-established. The delivery of the working prototype of the STARS system is expected at the end of the semester. DeliverablesThe client expects a successful demonstration of the STARS prototype on May 4, 2000 (give or take) in the Software Engineering Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. A set of documents on a CD-ROM describing the requirements analysis (RAD), the software project management plan (SPMP), testing procedures (TM) and a user manual of the STARS system will accompany the demonstration. Client ResponsibilitiesFor the successful completion of this project, the cilent will be responsible for the following:
|