NTV-2 Standards Forecast
The purpose of the Standards Forecast subview (NTV-2) is to:
• identify emerging, obsolete and fragile standards,
• to assess their impact on the architecture and its constituent elements.
A forecast that addresses emerging standards gives insight into the direction that the project will take.
In HOPEX NAF, the standards forecast gives the details of a specific type of master plan: the standard master plan.
When a master plan is created from the NTV-2 navigation tree, this master plan automatically has the "Standard" type checked. For other kinds of master plans the user can check other types, however, the "Standard" type remains checked.
The standards defined in the NTV-1 subview can then be planned in the different states. HOPEX provides a default state and for standards. The following states are normally appropriate for standards:
Similarly to the "preparation", "production", and "retirement" states that can be linked, the states above are linked to equivalent stereotypes that classify them:
• Envisioning, Emerging: the standard is not available in a stable state for users but work is being done to achieve this stable state. The applied Stereotype is "Preparation".
• Confirmed: the standard is in a mature state and can be confidently used by the users. The applied Stereotype is "Production".
• Obsolete: the standard is no longer available and the user should consider another standard or a new release of the standard. The applied Stereotype is "Retirement".
Milestones and Time Periods
Business milestones are usually useless in the description of standard forecasts as they are not developed by the designer team but supplied by external organizations (for example NAF is defined by the NATO and HTML is defined by the W3C).
So, even though milestones can still be defined in standard master plans, it is recommended that you only have a few of them representing the very big steps in the standard evolution and that you set the start and end dates on the periods to match the different states of the standard.
Customization
Similarly to any time-dependent item, a specific state machine can be created with a set of customer-defined states.
This machine can then be attached to the standard metaclass if it applies to any standard (verify that the designer has the appropriate rights to see the metaclass) or directly to a specific standard.
If defining a new set of states, check that all the defined states are classified via the three stereotypes:
• "Preparation",
• "Production"
• "Retirement".
The Setup tab of a behavior item allows you to set the metaclasses that can be associated to the states.