1. Using Collaboration Tools to Improve Artifact Consistency in CS577 Projects
Allen Kou

2. Motivation Concurrent engineering can lead to inconsistent artifacts
Finding and fixing inconsistencies is time consuming and tedious
It’s easy for minor inconsistencies to go unnoticed

3. Sharing Artifacts
Common Approach: and Team Website

4. Problems Availability Does not promote collaboration
Referencing out of date documents
Intermediate versions may not be available
Everyone may not have same versions
Does not promote collaboration
Only focus on your own document
Ignore other documents
Documents are large
Tedious to search individually
Latest version may show up few hours before the due date despite lots of intermediate edits.
Every man for themselves attitude.
Documents are relatively large, ~50 pages, takes a while to load on an old laptop, no easy way to search all documents without doing them individually.

5. Examples of Inconsistency 1
SSAD Use Case
Examples from Team 6. Don’t mean to pick on my teammates but I’m familiar with our artifacts.

6. Examples of Inconsistency 1
SSAD Use Case
SSRD
Requirement 6

7. Examples of Inconsistency 2
FED
Evaluation
Summary
SSAD Styles, Patterns,
Frameworks
This is a very subtle inconsistency.

8. Examples of Inconsistency 2
FED
Evaluation
Summary
SSAD Styles, Patterns,
Frameworks
ASP.NET MVC 3 requires Visual Studio 2010! 8

9. Collaboration Tools 3 extremely popular tools 1) Google Docs
2) SharePoint
3) Zoho

10. Google Docs – Features 1 Search collections Collections
Sharing Settings
Version Management

11. Google Docs – Features 2 Concurrency control
See who else is viewing the document
Chat with others viewing the document
Concurrent edits appear in real time

12. Google Docs – Pros and Cons
Intuitive & easy to use
Search entire documents
Access & concurrency control
Cons
Messes up 577 template header / footer format
Error converting CS 577 documents
No version management for doc?
Users are polarized
Requires internet access
1 MB single file upload limit?
Polarized -> love it (one less microsoft product) or hate it (used to office)
Give an overall summary – good tool, nice features, intuitive

13. SharePoint Features Collaborative Document Management
Checkout documents
View revisions
Access control
Integration with Office
Build collaboration environment
Etc …
Popular enterprise solution. Very powerful tool that does a lot, including document management.

14. SharePoint…
Image from

15. Zoho – Features
Same main features provided by Google Docs

16. Zoho – Features 2 Offline mode Install a plugin
Access documents while offline

17. Zoho – Features 3 Microsoft Office plugin
Access and edit Zoho documents using Office
Windows only

18. How do collaboration tools help?
If we change Requirement CR-38 (based on the earlier example)
Search all documents to see what references CR-38
Modify other documents as necessary
Every member can easily access the most up to date document
Easier to track progress and share information
Search all documents
Set control access… maybe one person can edit SSAD / SSRD

19. Conclusion Many effective tools for collaborative document management
Each have strengths and weaknesses
Superior to only using s and the team website
Fixing inconsistencies in artifacts is tedious and difficult
Document management tools can reduce the number of inconsistencies