Talk:Life Cycle Model

Revision as of 10:46, 30 November 2014

Feedback from Dnhr0

Hello! I enjoyed reading your article and I found a couple of good points on it that make it easy and nice to read:

• There is a nice, natural flow in the content. It was quite easy to structure and picture in my mind what I was reading.
• It was understandable, with a good use of vocabulary and, of course, examples.
• The figures clarify the content easily, and are quite interesting.
• It was nice to go through the text and see that some key words were linked to other articles in the Wiki. It is very helpful when trying to get more in-depth knowledge about a certain topic.
• The references used throughout the text are from reliable sources.
• I think the length of the article is fine, since you talk about the important things of this topic.

• Thanks :-)

At the same time, I think there are some minor things that you may want to go through again in order to consider my opinion (if you find it useful). Some of my recommendations are:

• Spelling:
• (all considered and corrected)
  • Abstract: framework instead of frame work.
  • Historic Background: article instead of articel.
  • The Life Cycle Phases
    • Whether instead of wether (also in Development Phase).
    • “As suggested here” instead of “as suggest here”.
    • “As an activity” instead of “as a activity”.
    • In Main study: sufficiency instead of sufficiently (that is the idea I got but maybe the meaning is different).
    • Case Example Development Phase: through instead of trough.
    • Realisation Phase: tasks instead of task ?
    • Utilisation Phase. Its instead of it’s, and “performance is monitored” instead of “performance monitored”.
    • Activity Cycles within Individual Life Cycle Phases: Another instead of “an other”.

• Grammar: You may want to review these sentences:
  • Under Detailed study: “Within this phase detailed studies of the subsystems and their interrelation, which lead to detailed information about each sub solution and gives advice towards the implementation of the Engineering System.” It seems that there is a missing verb (or a part of the sentence).
  • Right, it sounds horrific. I rephrased the whole paragraph
  • Under Realisation Phase: “Examples are the production of machinery or in case of IT and service systems the full documentation of the system. The system is ready to be implemented.” The first one I would add some commas: ““Examples are the production of machinery or, in case of IT and service systems, the full documentation of the system”. However, it looks like there is a link missing between the first and the second sentences.
  • I added the commas and created the missing link

• In the abstract or summary, it could be a good idea to state the four phases of the life cycle model before referring to them. You start talking about these phases in the third line of the paragraph; however, you mention them until the end of it. It might be the case that you do not want to mention them before, but it was quite complicated to know what I was reading about without knowing these phases. It may also be a good idea if you state more clearly in this part what the reader is going to read in the article (explanation of the four phases, examples, variations of the model, etc.).
  • I moved the definition of the phases forward, it truly makes more sense that way. And I added a brief intro to the rest of the article.
• Don’t forget to reference the figures in the text. They are very useful, so it could be even better if the text guides you through them.
  • done
• It could be useful to mention (before explaining the four phases) why you have decided to take these four phases and not others. It is not clear if this is the way Rainer Züst and Peter Troxler do it, or if you got the idea from other sources. This also affects the figure with the life cycle phases and decision gates.
  • I have tried to clarify this in the revised abstract
• I consider it important to mention what you consider throughout the article as “Systems Engineering”. You could go into small detail, probably referencing a couple of sources. I think that it might be useful to divide the background in to sections: Main Concepts and Historical Background. That way you may be able to clarify this concept and probably make explicit the relationship between this topic and project/portfolio/program management.
  • I linked systems engineering to another wiki article for clarification, added a defintion in the background part and created the link to the Life Cycle model
• You may want to make the bullet points under the Development Phase in bold letters; however, it is just a suggestion, it may not be that relevant.
  • good idea
• The figures could be shown a little bit bigger. As they currently are, the reader needs to click on them to actually read the content.
  • done (400px)
• The second figure may need to add a label on the Y-axis to clearly state that it reflects influence (very helpful chart).
  • The Y-axis corresponds to the percentage of the two curves at any given stage during the development phase. The two curves indicate influence vs. knowledge on/about the project and are marked accordingly
• It could be nice to contrast in some way the Life Cycle Model to the variations shown in the last section. You could discuss some advantages and disadvantages that this model may have, and how the other variants help or fail to address some of the disadvantages. This might not be the case if they are suitable for different circumstances.
  • I added the four different approaches in that context and tried to make clear, that the choice of method is very much dependent on the circumstances. A proper comparison of models would be outside of the scope of this article.
• I think we do not have a specific referencing format, but it would be better for your article if they were written in the same style.
  • done

Review by kikigaga

First of all I thought it was nice and easy to read. It was kept to the point. The other reviewer (as I can see) covered a lot of my points so I will stick to the things that were extra;)

• Think about if you want a specific angle on the concept. I thought it was nice to hear about the area but as I also know about LCA and stuff I might want to know how this differs and what you found interesting about the subject?
  • I clarified the angle on the concept as 'viewed from a systems engineering perspective' (in abstract & background), I did add minimal description of the differences in the models and backup reading if required. I don't think my personal opinion belongs into an article.
• I liked the case company idea, but maybe you would want to introduce it in the beginning as a strategy for the article so the reader is prepared. Did you or someone else come up with the cases?
  • good point, I wrote a brief introduction to the article within the abstract, in which I incorporated your suggestion. It states as well that the company case is fictional.
• Could there be some implementation advice?
• I added the section Approaches and reflection in order to give an idea, in which direction a company might choose to develop
• Are we going to know what happens to the case companies?
  • no, since its based on (science) fiction
• I would like to see a longer discussion of the model compared to de other models. How is this better, why do companies choose other models and so on.
• as suggested above, a proper discussion would go well beyond the scope of this article, however I added some more meat to the 'alternative model' section

Thank you for making it interesting to read, I really enjoyed it!

• thank you, for taking your time to create a very detailed and thorough feedback, it help a great deal to improve this article!