DOQS REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING SERIES

Quality-Based Design Transition

Quality-Based Design Transition improves the activities required to move analysis deliverables on to system design. Many organizations that invest heavily in analysis modeling still lose much of that investment by setting aside the models at the beginning of design to revert to traditional design techniques. Through proper transition techniques,
system and data architectures can be derived from the analysis models, maximizing modeling’s return on investment.

This seminar explains how to define, verify, and validate the analysis-to-design models for information systems:

• Focuses effort on a criss-crossed transition strategy that actually runs contrary to traditional notions of preliminary design: logical data driving application architecture design, and logical process driving data base design.
• Balances the integration of data and process implementation possibilities, allowing for extensive “what if” analysis of the balance between the two perspectives. This supports an extensive array of object-oriented design paradigms, or data distribution possibilities; or simply an optimization of an implementation using traditional clientserver approaches.
• Automatically generates an exhaustive list of data views for design, including all possible screens and reports that might be implemented as part of any system. Such a list also includes many views that are unnecessary, but by exhausting the possibilities, expensive omissions are avoided.
• Implies an overall structure for comprehensive testing that takes into account all of the timing considerations and dependencies inherent in the process model, while supporting the data identifier structures inherent in the data models. Testing is focused on the highest-risk areas rather than spread exhaustively over the entire model.

This seminar supports the broadest range of analysis-to-design transition activities. The transition steps needed remain virtually the same whether the design transition is targeted at a completely manual non-automated implementation strategy, such as a basic process reengineering effort, or a completely integrated and modern systems implementation, such as a Web page interconnecting all customers and suppliers. A clean and complete transition maximizes the value of the investment already made in detail data and process analysis.

Seminar Rationale

Organizations invest heavily in project analysis activities, often to discover that they lack the skills needed to effectively take full advantage of the results of that analysis as design begins. It is not uncommon for
projects to virtually set aside analysis artifacts to begin traditional design activities from a clean slate.

These projects are later left wondering why there are significant omissions and defects, and again why the resulting design doesn’t align well to the analysis models. Such failure to align leaves management feeling that the analysis investment wasn’t worthwhile, instead of recognizing that the design transition was deficient.

Misalignment not only hurts the current project, it also assures that the next project to come along will not want to take advantage of the perceived failed analysis models. Analysis model reuse drops to near zero, and modeling falls into disfavor. Future investment in modeling is canceled, or becomes a token effort. Effective transition skills can prevent these failures.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• LOGICAL DATA DESIGN
  • Parametric & Tabular Data
  • Static & Dynamic Data
• LOGICAL PROCESS DESIGN
  • Implementation Data Stores
• DATA ARCHITECTURE
  • Logical Data Translation
  • Relational vs. Star/Snowflake
  • Data Horizon Paradigm™
• SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
  • Exhaustive Screen Generation
• IMPLEMENTATION FACTORS
  • User Interfaces
  • Security & Control
• TRANSITION TRENDS
  • Web Implications
  • Data Warehousing

Seminar Uniqueness

Design transition is a virtually nonexistent topic in the literature, and in the education and training arena. This seminar offers specific unambiguous techniques for transitioning the hard earned benefits of rigorous analysis into objective preliminary design artifacts, maximizing the benefits to the project.