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Lack of Process Overview [message #48985]

Fri, 04 April 2008 12:19

Eclipse User

Originally posted by: padraig.oleary.lero.ie

Hey,

I am using EPF to produce a process framework for product derivation
activities in Software Product Lines.

My main problem is the lack of process overview when using EPF. It's a
shame that EPF is unable to generate a graph of all artefacts and tasks.
As a work around I have used Visio to manually draw process overview
diagrams.

Have other people encountered this problem? Are there any plans in the
future for an overview feature in EPF?

Padraig

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #49009 is a reply to message #48985]

Tue, 08 April 2008 06:07

danny foncke

Messages: 92
Registered: July 2009

Member

I have more or less the same requirement.

My users/readers complain that they 'loose context' when they click down
into a graph.

I explain that they can see 'where they come from' via the breadcrumbs,
but still all information about siblings (of the element whose details
are shown) is lost. The left hand tree browser gives more info when you
click where am I' (which however closes when you ask 'where am I' on a
task.)

So what would be great is the behavior that higher levels and siblings
stay visible when you click on an element.
'Open' elements on the same level can close

I'm not a front-end developer, but I can imagine this is easier said
then done.
A separate context-tree-view would maybe be easier ?
This can be the left-hand tree, if he refreshes automatically (no
clicking 'where am I'), and if he displays all levels.

Just thinking ....
maybe there are other ways ?

Padraig O'Leary wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I am using EPF to produce a process framework for product derivation
> activities in Software Product Lines.
> My main problem is the lack of process overview when using EPF. It's a
> shame that EPF is unable to generate a graph of all artefacts and tasks.
> As a work around I have used Visio to manually draw process overview
> diagrams.
> Have other people encountered this problem? Are there any plans in the
> future for an overview feature in EPF?
>
> Padraig
>

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #49039 is a reply to message #49009]

Tue, 08 April 2008 12:58

Eclipse User

Originally posted by: joerg.leuser.daimler.com

Hi,

I am using EPF to document structured processes (which means there are
many Phases, Iterations and Activities in a hierarchy). The result is that
at the lowest level only a couple of tasks compose the parent
phase/iteration/activity and therefore the graphs for the parents are
quite small (in the sense of context).

danny wrote:
> My users/readers complain that they 'loose context' when they click down
> into a graph.
Yes, I also get such responses.

> Padraig O'Leary wrote:
>> My main problem is the lack of process overview when using EPF. It's a
>> shame that EPF is unable to generate a graph of all artefacts and tasks.
>> As a work around I have used Visio to manually draw process overview
>> diagrams.
>> Have other people encountered this problem? Are there any plans in the
>> future for an overview feature in EPF?
From my experience, the users want to have the question answered 'What is
the complete process' when you introduce a new process to them. When they
got the overview, they are mainly interested in their parts of the process
(for which EPF works quite well). With the graphs generated by/with EPF,
you can't present an overview easily because you don't have graphs that
show multiple hierarchy-levels of your process. Therefore you either
remove the hierarchical modelling from your process or you generate the
overview graphs manually to get overview graphs.

I would appreciate if it would be possible to generate such process
overview graphs within EPF because generating them manually and keeping
them up to date is a lot of work and error-prone.
However, it would be nice if it was still possible to hide some
tasks/artifacts from such overview graphs so only the important ones are
visible.

Regards,
Jörg
---
Jörg Leuser
Group Research and Advanced Engineering, Ulm
Daimler AG

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #49291 is a reply to message #49039]

Mon, 14 April 2008 07:48

llauramelie

Messages: 28
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Hi everybody!

About Process overview, I've got some requests I think many other EPFC
users had one day:

- about Activity Diagram :
- from a single lifecycle, I need to draw three different activity
diagrams which focus on different group of processes
- and, I need to show on those diagram the dependencies between the
processes by using Work Products as interfaces

- about Activity Detail Diagram :
- I need to view on this kind of diagram the other roles who
interfere in the different tasks : I find it sad that only the primary
performers are represented
- Moreover, I can't organize the graphic objects according to the
order of execution of tasks...

So, I hope that someone has got an idea to help me about this...

Regards,
Ms.Hampshire

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #49337 is a reply to message #49039]

Mon, 14 April 2008 20:34

danny foncke

Messages: 92
Registered: July 2009

Member

I think lots of people would like a more powerful publication approach

I do like what the APF offers, and never woud I want to down-play the
work that got into it

But maybe a separate plugin, from the ground up (or somewhere near the
ground), is what is called for ?
Is the user-base of EPF big enough to justify that kind of project ?

Jörg Leuser wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am using EPF to document structured processes (which means there are
> many Phases, Iterations and Activities in a hierarchy). The result is
> that at the lowest level only a couple of tasks compose the parent
> phase/iteration/activity and therefore the graphs for the parents are
> quite small (in the sense of context).
>
> danny wrote:
>> My users/readers complain that they 'loose context' when they click
>> down into a graph.
> Yes, I also get such responses.
>
>> Padraig O'Leary wrote:
>>> My main problem is the lack of process overview when using EPF. It's
>>> a shame that EPF is unable to generate a graph of all artefacts and
>>> tasks. As a work around I have used Visio to manually draw process
>>> overview diagrams.
>>> Have other people encountered this problem? Are there any plans in
>>> the future for an overview feature in EPF?
> From my experience, the users want to have the question answered 'What
> is the complete process' when you introduce a new process to them. When
> they got the overview, they are mainly interested in their parts of the
> process (for which EPF works quite well). With the graphs generated
> by/with EPF, you can't present an overview easily because you don't have
> graphs that show multiple hierarchy-levels of your process. Therefore
> you either remove the hierarchical modelling from your process or you
> generate the overview graphs manually to get overview graphs.
>
> I would appreciate if it would be possible to generate such process
> overview graphs within EPF because generating them manually and keeping
> them up to date is a lot of work and error-prone. However, it would be
> nice if it was still possible to hide some tasks/artifacts from such
> overview graphs so only the important ones are visible.
>
> Regards,
> Jörg
> ---
> Jörg Leuser
> Group Research and Advanced Engineering, Ulm
> Daimler AG
>

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #484150 is a reply to message #49291]

Fri, 04 September 2009 12:38

Isabela

Messages: 16
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Does someone know if this is being done somehow?

Someone has other approach to create Activity Diagrams where Work Product
can also be shown together with tasks?
I also needed to create hyperlinks in texts in the Activity Diagrams, is
it possible with the EPFC Diagram Drawing Tool?

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Re: Lack of Process Overview [message #518127 is a reply to message #48985]

Wed, 03 March 2010 08:00

Gerhard Schneider

Messages: 17
Registered: October 2009

Junior Member

There are two aspects to consider:

(1) The inner structure of your process description. This must fulfill several (partially contradicting) requirements of your users and authors, and this may lead to major restructuring work to optimize the presentation of the process.

(2) The ability of the EPF Composer to create meta-information about a library, for instance, how many items of type X exist and where they are. When working with larger libraries, this would be an enormous help for a library manager. However, does anyone here has an information, if such a feature is on the roadmap?

Regards,
Gerhard

---

innoreq® Gerhard Schneider - Prozesse einfach verbessern.
http://www.innoreq.com

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