ENGINEERING ARTIFACTS 6.3 by Walker Royce

1
ENGINEERING ARTIFACTS 6.3
by Walker Royce

• Three Engineering artifacts
• Vision Document
• Architecture Description
• Software User Manual

2
Vision Document

• The Vision Document provides a complete vision of
  the software system under development supports
  the contract between the funding authority the
  development organization
• The Vision Document is meant to be changeable as
  understanding evolves of the requirements,
  architecture, plans technology
• A good vision should change slowly.
• It is written from a users perspective, focusing
  on the essential features of the system
  acceptable levels of quality.
• It should contain at least two appendixes. The
  first describing the operational concept using
  use cases, the second one describing the change
  risks inherent in the vision statement to guide
  defensive design efforts.

3
Vision document cont

• The vision statement should include a description
  of what will be included as well as those
  features that will be considered but not
  included. The operational capacities, user
  profiles interoperational interfaces with
  entities outside the system boundary should also
  be specified.
• It should not be defined only at the initial
  operating level, its likely evolution path should
  be addressed so that there is a context for
  assessing design adaptability.
• The vision document provides the contractual
  basis for the requirements visible to the
  stakeholders.

4
Architecture Description

• The architecture description provides an
  organizational view of the software architecture
  under development.
• It is extracted largely from the design model
  includes views of the design, implementation,
  deployment sets sufficient to understand how the
  operational concepts of the requirements set will
  be achieved.
• The breadth of the architecture description
  varies from project to project depending on many
  factors.
• The architecture can be described using a subset
  of the design model or as an abstraction of the
  design model with supplementary material or both.

5
Software User Manual

• The software user manual provides the user with
  the reference documentation necessary to support
  the delivered software. It should include
  installation procedures, usage procedures
  guidance, operational constraints, a user
  interface description at a minimum.
• A manual with a user interface should be
  developed early in the life cycle because it is a
  necessary mechanism for communicating and
  stabilizing an important subset of requirements.
• The user manual should be written by members of
  the test team who are more likely to understand
  the users perspective than the development team.

6
?