Problem Description

Introduction

This page treats the problems reported on the Effort quantities displayed in the legacy COMPARE VERSIONS page or in the Background Facts Tile in the Health Dashboard.  The page was written for the Compare versions page, but some of the information can be used by the Background facts tile.

For more information, please see this documentation page:  Background Facts and Business Value Metric upload

The problems that are encountered can be that:

  1. The value is not correct compared to expected value computed using the Cost profile
  2. The value of Effort per Processed Artifacts is zero
  3. The Effort's variation column is zero


Applicable in CAST Version
Release
Yes/No
8.3.x (tick)


Action plan
  1. Select the pages you are interested in -

  2. If none of the cases matches your problem then please follow the below steps
  3. Are the items being added actually artifacts?
  4. Is the cost data missing for any technologies?
  5. Is the portfolio selection the same for both snapshot?
  6. Is the object part of a module?
  7. Calculation of the effort quantities - Information for the Legacy CAST Engineering Dashboard Definitions
  8. Transmit the problem to R&D

Are the items being added actually artifacts?

If items are being added to the dashboard, but the dashboard shows no artifact changes and hence no effort is being calculated, then check if all the added items are artifacts. 

In one case, a customer added a new database and expected new artifacts and effort to show up in the dashboard for the new snapshot which had this new database.    In this case, the added items were all database tables which are not considered artifacts and therefore no effort was calculated for them.

You can see what items are considered artifacts by looking in the associated release documentation which will provide a list of artifacts that CAST recognizes.

You can verify what objects have been analyzed by examining the items in Enlighten or you can run a query like this on the central for a specific object which the customer has said should be included:


select * from dss_object_types where object_type_id in (select object_type_id from dss_object_info where object_id in (Select object_id from dss_objects where object_name like '%<name>%'));


which would produce in the above described case a row like this, which shows that the object is a table and will not have effort calculated:

138017;"Oracle table";"Oracle table";0;"CAST_Oracle_RelationalTable"


Is the cost data missing for any technologies?

If cost data is missing in the dashboard for a specific technology, then it would be expected behavior for the associated effort for those technologies to be zero as well. You can check this out by going to:

  • In the legacy CAST Engineering Dashboard - You can enter values for these in the dashboard by doing the following steps:
    • From Quick Access, in Administrator pages, follow link : Access To Cost Model Administration Page
    • Enter Edit technologies cost per man-day
    • Enter Edit technologies change effort rates
    • Enter Edit technologies new development effort bookmark rates
    items are being added to the dashboard, but the dashboard shows no artifact changes and hence no effort is being calculated, then check if all the added items are artifacts. 
  • For CAST 8.3.X, Please see this page for reviewing and/or uploading this information:  Background Facts and Business Value Metric upload

If you then run a new snapshot, then you will get the effort properly calculated.  Please note that there is a bug that has been fixed in 7.0.10, so if you are on a version prior to this, you will have to follow a different procedure.  Please contact CAST support in this case to assist you or upgrade to the most recent version of CAST which would include this fix.

The following query run on the local will also assist in examining the cost information for each technology to make sure that it is present and has all values.  Nine values are the default with cost_value_index values of -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4:

select * from COST_CONFIG cc join Cat c on c.IdCat = cc.Techno_id order by techno_id, cost_value_index;

Get the customer's input

Ask customer to provide the following input for issues with the legacy CAST Engineering Dashboard:

  1. A screenshot of the Compare version page including the end of the URL, the Selected Context, the Date Range and the selected Cost profile. This will enable to know which are the snapshots compared in the Dashoard, for which module/application/system and the value the customer's is complaining for.
  2. A dump of it's central repository (CB)
  3. The productivity.xml file if any is used

For issues with the BackgroundFactsTile, get a dump of the measurement database for investigation.

Is the portfolio selection the same for both snapshot?

Check the module definition and contents for both snapshots and make sure that they are the same in both snapshots.  See this page for assistance on module configuration and content examination:  CMS - User Defined Module editor

Is the object part of a module?

Check if the object is part of the same module for both snapshots with this query:  SQL Queries - CAST Knowledge Base - Queries on Module - Module content and properties

Calculation of the effort quantities - Information for the Legacy CAST Engineering Dashboard Definitions

Legend

  1. CER = Creation Effort Rate ( get the values from the Cost Profile page)
  2. ChER = Change Effort Rate ( get the values from the Cost Profile page)
  3. LC = Low Complexity
  4. MC = Medium Complexity
  5. HC = High Complexity
  6. VHC = Very High Complexity
  7. AdA = Added Artifacts  (see technical size section)
  8. UpA = Updated Artifacts (see technical size section)
  9. DeA = Deleted Artifacts (see technical size section)

Addition (L/M/H/VH complexity)

AdA_LC x CER_LC + AdA_MC x CER_MC + AdA_HC x CER_HC+ AdA_VHC x CER_VHC

Updated (L/M/H/VH complexity)

UpA_LC x ChER_LC + UpA_MC x ChER_MC + UpA_HC x ChER_HC+ UpA_VHC x ChER_VHC

Deletion (L/M/H/VH complexity)

DeA_LC x CER_LC + DeA_MC x CER_MC + DeA_HC x CER_HC+ DeA_VHC x CER_VHC

Estimated Effort

Addition (L/M/H/VH complexity) + Updated (L/M/H/VH complexity)+ Deletion (L/M/H/VH complexity)
=
(AdA_LC x CER_LC + AdA_MC x CER_MC + AdA_HC x CER_HC+ AdA_VHC x CER_VHC)

+ (UpA_LC x ChER_LC + UpA_MC x ChER_MC + UpA_HC x ChER_HC+ UpA_VHC x ChER_VHC)

+ (DeA_LC x CER_LC + DeA_MC x CER_MC + DeA_HC x CER_HC+ DeA_VHC x CER_VHC)

Transmit the problem to R&D

If the calculated value i different from the displayed value, then transmit the issue to the R&D providing

  1. information got from  Get the customer's input
  2. the justification, from your observation, why there is an issue
Notes / Comments



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