Life Cycle & Technical Process

Kidney Exchange Platform (KEP) is a system where doctors and patients register themselves as
users to get an appointment for the analysis and operations of Kidney transplant. KEP also
matches the kidney of the patient with the donor’s kidney. The system would register the users
first by getting all necessary details of the user and save all the information. Then users can login
as patient or doctor to see all the upcoming and past appointment(s) for themselves. Doctors can
also accept or complete the appointment(s) with a patient. Likewise, when the patient logins to
the system, he/she can see his/her information related to the appointment(s) and can schedule
new appointments or operations with the doctor.

Some of the tools related to the system engineering are categorized in the concept phase, which
are Customer Affinity process, behavior diagrams, requirements diagram, decision matrix, GQM,
AHP, CVP, SysML and the annotated concept sketches come under the concept phase of the Life
cycle.

The business analysis for the KEP shows that both the patient and doctor can schedule the
appointments for the kidney exchange operation, or the analysis of the disease, easily and
quickly. Also, both can see the previous history of the appointments and see their upcoming
schedules. The admin can manage the users and the resources for the system. The clinical staff
can manage the clinical resources necessary and the attendance system associated with the KEP.

The stakeholder analysis consists of the users which are associated with the KEP, which are the
patients, doctors, clinical staff, and the administration team. They all have separate logins to the
system, and they can register username and password with respect to their email address.
The requirement definition process consists of the documentations for the KEP. These are
documents of various types; some of them are software requirement documents, software
design documents and software requirement analysis documents etc. These are the documents
which consist of the introduction of the system, the purpose of the system, the environment of
the system and the design which consists of the UML diagrams, prototypes, the database design
and the architecture of the system. These documents are the base for the system to start working
on the idea and concept. These documents also contain the testing criteria and evaluations of
the test cases for each of the modules and functions in the system.

The architecture process of the KEP relies on the system requirements and the system
functionality definition within the ODT and the interface matrix. The ODT of the KEP are
presented in the summary by showing how the subsystems are interrelated with each other and
demonstrating the relationships interface rows have with them. The key Performance parameter
for the KEP is mainly dependent on the tasks performance, and progress of the task to show how
each task is communicating with other tasks to complete the customers/stakeholders specified
results.

The design process of the KEP consists of the interfaces and the UML diagrams of the processes
of the system. They illustrate how the modules of the system are working together and what are
the relationships between them. The inputs and outputs of each module and their messaging
communication are identified and exhibited. The design process also consists of the system
design document, which further contains the detailed domain model analysis as well as the
classes of the main functionality of the KEP.

The Integration process of the KEP platform consists of the main activity of merging all the main
development code and the services of the software. Then we have testing of the merged code
before deploying it to the production server to test the whole software again. Once the code is
deployed to the server, regression testing is performed by checking if each screen is working
correctly after the deployment. All the code of the KEP platform is combined in the integration
process. Once the code is compiled, release of all components and modules are then created for
the deployment process onto the server of the KEP platform.

The development stage of the KEP consists of the iterative feedback from the internal and
external stakeholders, who are associated with the project directly and indirectly. The
development stage of the KEP relies on the documentation for the requirements, design and
testing of all the project modules. The prototypes defined in the documentation are the mockup
screenshots of the software and the main actions are defined on them. These prototype
screenshots are the source for the development stage to start each software screen. Once the
prototype of the KEP platform is ready, the developer of the project can use these prototype
screens to map the business logics on it.

The output of the development stage of the KEP platform is shown by the system engineering
tools such as FFBD, IDEF0 etc. The hardware and software design elements are the UML diagrams
of each module of the KEP platform, which are designed for each module and the communication
between each module of the KEP platform. These UML diagrams consist of the Use Case diagram,
the Sequence diagram, the Class diagram, and the State diagram. These requirements are
periodically checked with the internal and external stakeholders iteratively. Once they approve
the requirement modifications if any, the next iteration is started based on the feedback of the
previous iteration for the given input.

The verification stage of the KEP platform consists of confirming that the project is built and
developed according to the specifications, and fulfills all the said requirements. The input for this
stage is the system requirements, verification criteria and measuring criteria for it. Based on
these criteria, we evaluate the system by checking whether it is fulfilling the requirements as
defined for each of the modules in the requirements and design phase of the project. Based on
the feedback of each module tests and results, we evaluate each of the subsystem and system
requirements and performance.

The validation process of the KEP depends on the functionalities of each module, whether they
are valid and up to the mark with respect to the requirements, as defined in the requirements
phase of the project, and all the requirements which were listed in the design and requirement
phase of the project life cycle are performing well according to the evaluation criteria defined.
The input to this stage of the KEP consist of the stakeholder requirements and validation criteria,
and the output is the validation strategy, validation constraint and the system requirements of
the KEP.

The implementation process of the KEP relies on how the plan of the project development will
occur. The input to this stage is the design traceability, which is the features of the software, and
the requirements of each of the modules of the system and subsystems. For the design targets
of the KEP platform, the QFD is created to measure each tool of the system. Based on the
activities of the implementation process of the KEP platform, the implementation strategies are
created, and the implementation constraints are defined according to the system architecture
input provided.

The utilization stage of the KEP relies on the time when the overall system development is
completed and all the projects module are ready to test the functionalities of the system and
when the system is ready with all the intended requirements, as stated earlier, and the intended
conditions and constraint which were mentioned earlier in the requirement documents. This
utilization process consists of the two processes which are Transition process and Operation
process. These processes rely on how well the system is working and how the installation part
works in the system.
The Transition process consists of the initialization and the installation phase of the system. The
inputs for this process consist of the life cycle concepts and VCRM for the testing purpose of the
modules of the system. So, each requirement, which is associated with the test plan, is tested.
Furthermore, the originating and the derived requirements are tested, and the results are
validated during this phase of the system. This process also consists of the event tree and the
fault tree, from which the fault can be traced easily to the system that is not performing to the
desired level and/or where the performance is completely down. These test plans also contain
the behavioral and the non-behavioral requirements and test cases.

The operation process consists of the performance criteria of the system. The inputs for this
process consist of the life cycle concepts, validated system, validation report, and training and
testing material for the testing purpose of the modules of the system. So, each requirement is
associated with the FMEA with the failure reason, and the correctness action as well.
Furthermore, each subsystem has the failure modes which have some risk priority number
associated with them and have the correctness action mentioned so that the failure can be
mitigated in the subsystem, and the overall performance of the system will be up to mark as
mentioned in the requirement phase of the system. This process also consists of the event tree
and the fault tree, from which the fault can be traced easily to the system that is not performing
to the desired level and/or where the performance is completely down. This process is very
essential for the tester and the troubleshooter who can trace each activity and can ultimately
enhance the performance of the system significantly.

The production stage of the KEP platform relies on when the overall system is built and tested
properly. During the testing period, the bugs were identified. These bugs were corrected on time
and the system was deployed to the production. From the deployment to the production, the
construction document needs to be prepared for the KEP platform. It will also require the
manufacturing safety, reliability testing and the logistic optimization in the application to run
successfully, without any issues, in the production stage. In this stage, the system is observed
very closely. If there are new problems and bugs identified, then the solutions are provided by
the team on an urgent basis. It also requires the verification and the validation on the new
requirements, which need to go to the earlier steps. These changes would require all the system
engineering assessments before the approval.

The maintenance step of the KEP starts after the production step of the KEP project is completed
and the deployment of the latest release of the project is working, without any errors, on the
server. Once a new bug is identified in the KEP, maintenance period of the project starts. The
customer points out the problem/bug and asks for it to be resolved. Meanwhile, the
development team and the testing team are ready to work on it and fix it immediately. First the
analyst team, or the inspection team, of the KEP would try to troubleshoot the problem and
hopefully find the root cause of the issue found in the functionality of the system. Once the bug
or issue is identified, a new document is created for identifying the new issue, and the resolution
procedure for it. Along with that document, the supporting material is also provided to the team
as well as the timelines of the correctness of the issue or bug. Once the team is ready, and gets
the document, then the development team starts working to solve the issue and thus the above
development steps of the project life cycle starts again from the beginning of the project. Once
the development team completes the work, then the testing team will test their use cases with
the behavioral test plans, and if they find any issues, those issues will be pointed out to the
development team of the KEP to be resolved. Once all the new issues are resolved, it will go to
the deployment stage, and then to the production stage. Any new change request in the project
life cycle of the KEP also comes under the maintenance period of the project lifecycle.

The retirement step of the project life cycle consists of the disposal process. It is an important
part of the project life cycle. Once the project is completed and deployed to the production server
of the customer, it should be good to use for the stakeholders and admin of the system until the
system is obsolete, whether it is because of the technology not supported etc, unrepairable,
because of the system not supported etc, uneconomical to maintain because the cost exceeds
from the budget etc, or any other reason. So if the system removal is triggered and initiated, then
the system is removed from the operating environment, with the agreement of the permanent
removal from the customer environment and its server(s).

The system assessment process from the Subject Matter Experts (SME) is discussed here for the
KEP. Safety assessment is vital in terms of identifying risks, and the potential hazards for the
system. It is very important to mitigate the risk in the beginning stages of the project. This would
save time and money as well as to get rid of the potential hazards in the project. Severity Rating
System & Likelihood Rating System tool is used to define the risk probabilities to measure in the
early steps of the project life cycle. Once the system is free from any major risks, attacks, and
potential hazards, then after the production step of the KEP life cycle, the team will be
responsible for ensuring the mitigation of the risk from all of the life cycle stages of the KEP, from
planning to the maintenance step. This step of the system assessment process is really important
since all of the risk assessment of the project life cycle and the potential hazards detection during
the project life cycle are all done during this step. This step is ignored during the design and
development stage of the project life cycle.

Another important process for the SME is the usability analysis and the human system
integration. It is an important process, which helps the respective team to design and develop
the system which is effective and affordable for the human limitations and the capabilities. As
the design of the system is very important for the end users, the design and user interface of the
system are created in an eye catching, intuitive manner that enhances the human interactions.
Once the design and development is done according to the user experience, then the system will
be very helpful, intuitive and interactive for the users to use it, thus motivating and advocating
more and more users to enroll and use it. In the end, system analysts and the business analyst
goal is to promote the system as much as possible to potential users.
Another important process of the subject matter experts SME is the maintainability engineering.
This is an important part of the system because the life cycle of the project is dynamic in nature.
The trends are also changing, and new technology is arriving day by day. So, if you create a
software or system which is not on the latest technology, it will be obsolete from the market and
industry soon. This step of the subject matter experts SME has much importance among all
because it is a long-term process and it continues from the first step of the project and when the
change request occurs it remains in the context too because of the dynamic changes in the
technology with respect to the agile environment. Maintainability engineering refers to the
updating in the feature/module of the project, improvement in the feature/module of the project
and the new addition or enhancement in the feature/module of the project. This phase mostly
starts when the product or the system is purchased by the customer from the vendor and the
vendor must assign the resources to the customer product to give the best maintainability
services to the customer.

Another important process of the subject matter experts SME is the Life Cycle Cost Analysis. It is
an important approach for creating the project and starting the life cycle of the project
development. It is the technique to calculate the total cost of owning the facility or creating the
project from scratch. This tool is very beneficial when the project comes with lots of alternatives
and all the projects have the consequences related to the performance of the features and the
modules. So, this tool is excellent for analyzing the overall cost of the alternative projects and its
related activities. These costs consist of the initial cost of the project, service cost of the project,
preventative maintenance cost of the project, operating cost of the project and the disposal cost
of the project. When all these costs are calculated based on the analysis of each module of the
system then combine all these costs to get the Life Cycle Cost Analysis.

The INCOSE report describes the life cycle processes of the overall project. It describes each and
everything related to the project. It starts from the concept phase of the project, where the
requirements are defined for the project, all the way to the retirement process, which consist of
the proper disposal process for the project. From the beginning planning of the project, to the
design and development, and the eventual retirement/disposal of KEP, each phase is very
significant. Furthermore, all the project life cycle phases should be taken seriously to achieve
success at the end of the project.