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Please take a look at the FAQ below. If this doesn't answer your question, feel free to contact us directly. GeneralWhat's the difference between the EP and EP lite product lines?EP is a much more comprehensive development methodology than EP lite. EP incorporates all the critical development activities as found in EP lite plus a wide range of project management, quality assurance, configuration management, maintenance and support, system administration and general administration activities. EP also has built-in project and technical review points throughout the development life-cycle to further ensure joint understanding and the quality of the end system. In many respects EP is designed for larger development organisations where additional built-in quality checks are critical. EP lite is designed for smaller companies/departments where increase in productivity and development control is the primary focus. EP lite can be viewed as a tailored subset of EP. EP comes with an ISO 9001:2000 cross-reference to assist companies in gaining accreditation to this standard as well as CMMISM based policy statements. You can obtain a good understanding of the differences by comparing the following:
What's the difference between the System, Software and Hardware Product Lines?EP for Systems Development is the super-set of procedures work instructions, check lists and templates. The Software and Hardware product lines are tailored sub-sets of the System product line. In general, the Software and Hardware tailored variants include all procedures, work instructions, check lists and templates which are not hardware or software specific (eg. requirements analysis, project management, etc) and those which are specific to software or hardware respectively. What is included/excluded is indicated by a tick/cross in the following lists:
What's the difference between a Procedure and a Work Instruction?
How does EP relate to ISO 9001?EP comes with a complete ISO 9001:2000 cross reference matrix which explains how the procedures and work instructions address all of the ISO 9001 requirements. This explanation includes on-line links to the related procedures and work instructions making it easy to follow/verify the ISO 9001 conformance. This cross-reference is provided to assist companies in gaining ISO 9001 accreditation. EP goes much further than the requirements of ISO 9001 in many respects. EP is an engineering process that provides a process flow, increases productivity, increases project control and reduces development risk as well as ensuring quality - the later of which is the primary focus of ISO 9001. How does EP relate to the SEI CMMSM and CMMISM?EP is aimed at CMM/I Level 3 (Defined) where the development efforts are managed via the process and there is visibility at the task level. The CMM/I emphasises the project management aspects which is fully supported by the EP process with no less than ten work instructions dedicated to project management (budgeting, estimation, project plan, project task assignments, management reports, etc). There is a complete set of CMMISM based policy statements that include links into the EP procedures and work instructions to show how the commitment of the policy is met through the activities as defined (and templated) by EP. The CMM/I was a major input into the development of EP (as was ISO 9001, IEEE, MIL/DoD standards and industry best practices). Hence the emphasis on the project management and tailorability. The CMM/I Level 4 (Managed) emphasis on quantitative control is partially addressed through several of the work instructions that record statistics on various quality and progress factors (e.g. design walkthrough, code inspection, run-time unit testing, integration and test, task assignments, summary WBS, timesheets, training, etc). The fact that EP is designed to be tailored directly supports the primary focus of CMM/I Level 5 (Optimizing). What training is available?There is a variety of courses/workshops available to train your engineers and/or managers in the best practices of EP. These training courses can be tailored to suite your specific requirements and further supplemented by hands-on mentoring by our senior consultants. Course outlines of our standard training courses/workshops are available on-line or contact info@ss.com.au for more details. What if we have existing QA procedures, templates, etc?Many companies have some existing procedures and/or templates which they have been using to date. Usually these are structured around hard copy QA systems. By applying the templates, which were used to build the EP procedures and work instructions, you can easily convert or merge any of your specific procedures/templates into the on-line structure. Ultimately you will end up with the "best of both worlds" by merging industry best practices that come with EP with your specific procedures. EP provides a complete and comprehensive engineering process, however your existing procedures and templates can only but further increase its usefulness to you. InstallationWhat is Perl for - do I need to install?Technically speaking you do not "need" Perl in order to run and use EP. There are however a number of Perl scripts provided to make tailoring EP easier for you. There are two functions of these scripts:
As such, only staff members who are involved in the tailoring of EP will require access to a set of installed Perl run-time libraries in order to run the scripts. Refer to the chapter on "tailoring EP" in your User Manual or refer to the "Procedure and Work Instruction" work instruction in EP itself. Where can I get the latest version or different port of Perl?The latest version of Perl (including source code) for most of the supported platforms (Unix, NT, 95, MacOS and others) or at least a link to a site with a platform port can be found at http://www.perl.com/. What if I already have Perl?So long as your version of Perl is 5.004 or later then you can use it - and not worry about installing the supplied copy of Perl with EP. Just make sure your login has visibility (ie. PATH is set) to the Perl run-time libraries in order to execute the scripts. Do I need to install a revision control repository?Technically speaking "no", EP does not require its knowledge base to be under a revision control repository in order to be used.
However, it is highly recommended that you do place all of the EP files (including templates) under revision control. The primary reason is that your EP process should undergo changes over time to adjust to your specific environment, new development tools, new techniques, etc. These changes should be controlled - starting with revision control. EP has been designed to be tailored with the Intranet based architecture, supplied work instruction and templates to build more EP as well as embedded revision control tags. All of these factors are targeted at assisting you in improving your process. This is the foundation of CMM Level 5 (Optimizing) and the TQM principle of Continuous Improvement. Refer to the chapter on "Revision Control in EP" in your User Manual for some guidelines on what your revision control tool should support to make life easier for yourself. Plus, refer to the "Revision Control" work instruction within EP itself for the techniques of applying revision control. What are the system requirements to run EP?Web browser: HTML level 3+ with frames and JavaScript capability (eg. Netscape Navigator 3+ or Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4+). Platform: Because EP works through your web browser, if you have a compliant browser then you can run EP. As such the following platforms are supported:
Disk Space: Up to 24 MB for EP and 12 MB for EP lite depending on the product line and installation options. Template Formats: Templates are in a wide range of formats (some in multiple formats) requiring capable applications to be associated as follows:
Note: alternative applications which can import to/from the above can also be used to launch the templates. What do I need to do with my Intranet server?If you are accessing EP via an Intranet server you may need to configure the MIME types/sub-types and associated file extensions which are permitted to be passed on to your client browsers. How you configure the MIME types/sub-types and associated file extensions depends on the Intranet server you are using. Many come with a default configuration which will permit the more common template formats through. Please refer to your Intranet server manuals for details. The recommended MIME type/sub-type settings for the document extensions are:
Note: make sure that the browser Helper Application configuration uses the same MIME type/sub-types that are used by the Intranet Server. How to UseHow can I get a web page to display in a separate window?EP uses frames to minimise the number of navigation paths required to load the various pages. At times you may wish to see the web page or in-browser template (e.g. Word documents in Internet Explorer) fully displayed in a separate window. The most straight forward way to achieve this is either:
What does "in Summary Info" mean in the word templates?Only relevant for versions 3.1 and below. The MS Word formatted templates use a number of fields to make it easier for you to do global updates throughout the document (document number, name, revision, date, etc). In Word version 6 these fields can be found in the File | Summary Info dialog box. In later versions of Word, this dialog box is found under File | Properties. Note: once you have updated these fields you will need to refresh them in the document. The simplest way to achieve this is: Ctrl-A (select all) and F9 (refresh). However, this will not actually refresh the headers and footers - you have to refresh them separately by selecting View | Header and Footer and entering Ctrl-A, F9. Why do I get a blank name for a bookmark to a procedure or work instruction?Due to the use of frames in EP to improve the ease of navigation, an "index.htm" file is used to set-up the frame structure within which the procedure or work instruction is displayed. These "index.htm" files don't have a <TITLE> set which is what most browsers use to name a bookmark. You can either:
How can I change the background images - globally?
All the background images are located in
These backgrounds, as supplied, all contain the same image except for
Known Problems/IssuesI get garbled text in my window when selecting a templateThis occurs when you select a template which does not have a Helper Application association. This is often the case for the MS Project, AutoCAD, Protel Schematic and Protel PCB templates. The other template formats (Word, Excel, ASCII and HTML) normally have a meaningful default Helper Application configured. Refer to the chapter on "Configuring your Browser" in the User Manual for details on how to assign Helper Applications. Also be careful that you don't have more than one Helper Application associated with the one extension/MIME type, as this can result in the incorrect application being launched with, what it considers, an invalid template. It is also possible that the MIME type/sub-type is not configured or is different in your Intranet server (if you are using one). My browser reports "MIME extension not recognised" when selecting a templateThis is due to your Intranet server forwarding your browser a file which it has associated a MIME type and sub-type which is not recognised by your browser. You need to check what the Intranet server MIME type/sub-type settings are - see your System Administrator and/or the Intranet server manual. Then check that your browser has the same MIME type and sub-type associations and a meaningful Helper Application association. Refer to the following related FAQs:
The "validate" script aborts if the "report.htm" file is read-only (version 1.0 to 2.1 only)This is a known defect and has been rectified in version 2.2+ of EP and EP lite. It is due to the "validate" script attempting to overwrite the "report.htm" file but not having the privileges to do so. Unfortunately it exits without notifying the user. To work around this issue, either remove or rename the existing "report.htm" file and ensure that your login has permission to write to the folder you are running the "validate" script in (ie. "bin"). The "validate" script aborts saying it could not open a fileThis is most likely due to an issue with the Perl libraries (cwd.pm in particular) that are used by the validate script. Either there is another copy of the Perl libraries in the PATH which are being found first or the version of Perl installed is not 5.004+ (as provided on the distribution CD). To resolve, examine your PATH environment variable and ensure that your path to "perl\bin" is first in the order. Plus, search for the "cwd.pm" file to see if there is another copy of it. If so, remove the older version or exclude it from the path list. To confirm the version of Perl you are using enter "perl -v" in your command shell. It should report version 5.004_xx. If it does not, then you will need to either install the version supplied on the distribution CD, or refer to Where can I get the latest version or different port of Perl? FAQ. "Validate's" report.htm file reports a "Reference to Non-Existing File" when the file actually existsThe validate script performs case sensitive comparisons and relies on the case sensitivity of the underlying operating system when obtaining the list of filenames and their paths. To work-around this problem ensure that all HREF and SRC references are in uppercase and that the URL reference is in the same case as per your operating system. This has been fixed in version 4.0 onwards. "mktpname's" script misses some of the referenced templatesThe mktpname (Make Template List by Name) script will exclude referenced templates if the <A HREF> tag is not closed by a corresponding </A> tag on the same line. To work-around this problem ensure that both tags (<A HREF> and </A>) are on the same line and re-run the "mktpname" script. This has been fixed in version 4.0 onwards. |
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email: info@ss.com.au | phone: +61 8 9457 3664 | fax: +61 8 9457 3665 © Copyright Strategic Systems (WA) Pty Ltd |
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