David Harty and Angelo Lauria
CEN 4010: PARTS Rapid Prototype
Summary:
The PARTS project (Project Artifact Report Tracking System) is planned to aid software developers track and solve errors, or "Problem Reports" in software projects. PARTS will manage project repositories about projects, team members, managers, artifacts or work-products, and Problem Report (PR) status. For the purpose of this rapid prototype, we have chosen to follow the thread of events a user might experience upon logging into PARTS. Namely, the selection of a project to work on, the ability to search for a specific artifact or PR within the selected product, and the viewing and editing of PR specific details and history.
The PARTS flow:
Prototype guide:
Most users are well aware of the specifics about how to log onto any given system. However we felt it helpful to briefly describe the process, since this is where user access to projects is determined. When PARTS is started, a simple login screen is displayed. When the user correctly enters in his username and password, a dialog appears that gives the user a choice as to what project to open. This dialog has four (4) tabs. The "ALL" tab shows all of the projects available on the system. Of course, the user will only be allowed to open those which he has been given access to by a manager. The "Manager" tab shows only those projects for which the user has been granted manager access. Similarly the "User" tab displays all of the projects for which user access has been granted and the "Read Only" tab displays any projects for which read only access has been given.
The Open Project Dialog:
After a project has been selected, an all purpose "Main" window will appear. Most of the users interactions with PARTS will take place from within this interface. For example, a user will be able to make modifications to his user profile or password by pulling down the "User Options" menu and selecting the appropriate menu item. This thread has not been prototyped for this demonstration. Instead, we will focus on how the user can browse the artifacts and problem reports of the previously selected project.
The Main PARTS Window:
The user can enter information into the "Search Box," and then select whether to search for any matches, matches only in the Artifacts, or matches only in the PRs. When a match is found, the respective artifact is automatically selected in the tree view, and all of its PRs will be shown in the PR panel. If the result of the search was a PR, the PR found will be highlighted in the PR pane.
The Tree pane on the left shows all of the artifacts available for the selected project. Clicking on any of the artifacts will open up a "branch" of all of the artifacts PRs. At the same time the selected PRs will appear in the PR list pane to the right of the tree view. This pane displays all the basic information about the artifacts PRs such as PR number, a short description, the assigned user (if assigned), it's status, version, and creation date. This list can be sorted by selecting any of the column headers at the top of the pane. For example, if the user wanted to view all of the PRs assigned to him for a specific artifact, he could click on the Team Member column, and scroll alphabetically to his name.
When the desired PR has been located and selected, the "Details" button, or the "History" button can be selected for more information.
The Detail Report Dialog:
The above dialog appears when the user clicks on the "Details" button. The text within this dialog can only be edited by the manager assigned to this project. This particular user does not have manager status for this project, and hence the editing tools are not available to him.
The History Button:
The History dialog is displayed when a user clicks on the "History" button of the main window. Past entries are not edit-able, however the user can create new entries to the history log by clicking on the "Add Entry" button.
User Response:
For the User Response portion of the PARTS project, we interviewed team members from two different teams. Mike reviewed our early stage prototype, and Sam viewed the prototype in its current stages.
Mike liked the tree view concept, but wanted clarification on the searching mechanism for the PRs. Concerns included the ability to continue searching after an item had been found, commonly known as "find next." He also asked whether the search would identify artifacts or PRs, and requested that it search both. We decided to follow his suggestion, and even add the capability to limit it to search only artifact or PR if so desired. Other comments included security measures or access restrictions to users of read only, or low access permissions. This is addressed by hiding features not available to a user at a particular level.
Other suggestions where to add a drop down to add new members and manger options, but since we decided to follow a "user" thread, we temporarily passed on these suggestions.
Jointly we decided that it would be a good idea to have a protocol to directly alert a manager to certain "hot" items that might crop up during development. For example, a user comes across a mission critical problem that must be addressed at once. However since he doesn't have the appropriate access level, the only comment he can make is in the history dialog. We feel that it would be helpful is this were addressed, but since it was not described in the specifications document, we will put that aside pending further study.
Sam thought we should have more windows, but when asked what those windows should do, was quite silent. After provoking, he commented that it would be better to keep the current plan of a project selection dialog box, instead of incorporating the available projects into the Artifact tree.
In conclusion, the prototype described in this document follows only a narrow thread of the proposed functionality of PARTS. It purpose is only to provide a good feel for the interface of the entire project upon completion. Additional changes could be made to the prototype, pending further interviews with potential users.