Software Engineering Standards Workshop Software

Software Engineering Standards Workshop Software-Intensive Systems Development Case Study NZ Organics Portal Background You have accepted an assignment to rescue a “challenged” systems development for a startup ecommerce company. • •

•

• •

• •

• •

The original plan was to build a Web portal for NZ organic farmers to offer their products to consumers anywhere in the world for rapid delivery of fresh product 7 different vendors have been contracted by your client, the NZ Organic Farmers Federation [NZOFF]: • 4 are quite different software development organisations: o 2 of which offer configurable Commercial Off The Shelf products - an Enterprise Application Integration application and a credit card online transaction processor application o a third is a small local "agile" development organisation building the Web site portal and supporting database and schemas o the fourth is a local representative of an Indian CMMI Level 4 accredited software testing company • 2 "hardware" suppliers - one is providing the infrastructure and operating system for the servers; the other is providing cellular network / GPS-based hand held data input units to be used by NZ Organic farmer shareholders in the field • You work for the 7th vendor - a systems integration company whose specialty is getting software intensive systems up and running on time and in budget The project has already consumed 10 person years effort by NZOFF who now realise that they need help in systems integration because of disagreement among vendors as to deliverables, timings and contractual obligations - so your company is now involved The "burn rate" is currently 30 fulltime staff within NZOFF alone - and at least that again in the vendors The project has high public and shareholder visibility - dates for release 6 months from now have been published 3 months ago by NZOFF’s marketing department when the development was reported as being on track The system must integrate with and replace existing legacy systems and manual processes that have been in operation in NZOFF for the last 10+ years As a result of persistent fraudulent practices in international organics products trading (which is now high value as a result of northern hemisphere use of radio active pesticides) there are strict internationally agreed government regulations in force requiring suppliers of organic products to provide accurate traceability of product source back to harvest date, time and latitude and longitude of field in farm to be presented to the inquirer’s screen within 20 seconds of electronic query English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese language options for the portal must be available You are not the Project Manager (she has only recently taken up the role in NZOFF) - but you have been engaged to advise her on good software engineering practices to reduce development risks and improve chances of delivery on time

Exercise: What do you start looking for - and what kinds of software engineering development standards should you start referring to?

WD USB 2:Personal Stuff:IPENZ SE PN:Software Engineering Standards Workshop Cases 01.doc Last saved 18:53 22Mar15 Page 1 of 2

Software Engineering Standards Workshop Software-Intensive Systems Operations Case Study Polyversity Services Background You accept a new job with Polyversity Services. Polyversity Services is a recently constituted computing services organisation set up and jointly owned by 5 tertiary education providers in Bigtown New Zealand. It operates the management and administration databases and applications for these providers. It is planned that the 5 disparate administrative computing systems are to be consolidated into a unified shared service. Polyversity Services currently has 150 staff but it is forecast that this number will halve over the next 2 years as a result of efficiency gains from consolidating operations such as help desk, server hosting and purchasing. In addition, Polyversity Services has a plan to offer its shared administrative computing services to several other customers. It has identified 3 additional tertiary education provider customers in Mediumtown, some 150 km due east of Bigtown. You have been hired to make the consolidation and preparation for additional customers happen. However, within the first month in your new job you find that all your time - and more - is occupied in responding to numerous emergencies, system failures, data losses, successful hacking attacks and disgruntled users. Your job priorities seem to depend on the crisis of the moment and who shouts loudest from the senior management of the 5 customer/shareholder organisations. Exercise: How might standards help resolve issues and get software-intensive system operations back on track?

WD USB 2:Personal Stuff:IPENZ SE PN:Software Engineering Standards Workshop Cases 01.doc Last saved 18:53 22Mar15 Page 2 of 2