Systems Analysis and Modeling Project, Fall Semester, 2002

Project Scope and Objectives

The purpose of your "semester project" should be to develop a high-level "representation" for an engineering system of your choice.

Figure 1. Flowchart of Mappings and Traceability for System-Level Development

Projects should focus on the development of goals/scenarios, use cases, requirements, synthesis of models for system behavior and structure, use of traceability to connect project components, and preliminary ranking of design alternatives using simple multi-objective decision procedures. See Figure 1.

Project Requirements

I suggest that you simply follow (i.e., cut-and-paste) the same format as given in the "traffic intersection" and "pepsi machine" case studies. Each web-based project should contain the following sections:

  1. An Introduction

    Profiles should begin with a well written introduction to your application profile. The introduction should set the stage for the content to follow, and address some of the big picture issues shown in Figure 1. Some questions to think about include:

  2. Use Case Modeling

    What does the engineering system do?

    Create textual use cases, activity diagrams for scenarios (or collections of scenarios), and use case diagrams showing how the individual use cases fit together.

  3. Requirements Engineering

    Create a concept diagram (and text) showing the technical approach or design concept -- in abstract terms:

    Create a list of typical initial requirements for your application domain.

  4. System Behavior and System Structure

    Projects should describe the system behavior and system structure, as they exist in the early stages of system development.

    System Behavior
    Identify and define operational scenarios that cover the range of anticipated uses of the system product/service. For each scenario, define:

    Describe the process of requirements flowdown to the subsystems, and further refinement of requirements via scenarios at the subsystem level.

    System Structure
    Develop a small number (i.e., more than one!) of alternative system structures. For each structure, define:

  5. Traceability

    Create traceability tables showing how:

    Some requirements will also be traced to procedures for testing, validation and verification, but we'll worry about them in ENSE 623.

  6. Preliminary System Design

    Develop a preliminary system design by mapping the system behavior onto alternative system architectures (i.e., more than one architecture).

    For each alternative:

  7. Measures of Effectiveness

    Describe the measures of effectiveness reflecting customer expectations for your application domain.

    Present one or two examples showing how these measures of effectiveness apply in practice.

  8. Trade-Off Analysis

    Take a significant problem within your application area, and formulate it in terms of a multi-objective decision making problem. One of the design objectives must be cost.

    The important point at this stage is choosing a solution pathway that is appropriate to the problem at hand. What I will be looking for is justification of the problem formulation, and a critical assessment of the analysis that is conducted (both good and bad).

  9. References

    Provide a list of references for your project.

Assessment

Each group will be required to present their project on the web. using HTML, Javascript, Java, cool graphics, and so forth. In grading the projects I will be looking for:

Innovative use of web technologies will be appreciated and is strongly encouraged.

Due Date

Projects are due, Dec 16 at 7pm. Please hand in a screendump of your web-based project. This is a hard deadline. I have another exam on Dec. 18, and everything has to be graded and handed in before the close of business, Dec. 20.

I'm leaving the country on December 22, and if you don't get your project to me way before then, you won't get a grade for the semester. This comment is particularly important for students in ITV-land.


Developed in November 2002 by Mark Austin
Copyright © 2002, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland