Charter for the

AWIPS Software Recommendation and Evaluation Committee (SREC)

In Support Of TheAdvanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS)

June 17, 2013

1.Authority, Purposes, and Responsibilities.

a.Authority. The Office of Science and Technology charters the AWIPS Software Recommendation and Evaluation Committee (SREC) to review and recommend changes to the AWIPS software baseline. This Charter updates any previous AWIPS SREC process agreements or understandings. The oversight and approval functions are provided by theAWIPS Program Manager.

b.Purposes. This Charter:

(1)Establishes SREC voting and non-voting membership.

(2)Describes procedures for the SREC to recommend changes to the AWIPS software baseline:

a)The priority order of presented software modifications based on validated requests,

b)Software build contents,and

c)Software builds schedules.

(3)Establishes an SREC meeting schedule in synchronization with the AWIPS Software Release Cycle.

c.SREC Responsibilities.

(1)Recommend the contents for AWIPS software builds,

(2)Evaluate and prioritize software content recommendations, based on mission priorities, for integration into the AWIPS baseline,

(3)Analyze software content recommendations to determine impacts or level of effort of requests and resources availableto fulfill need.

(4)Facilitate enhanced communication, cooperation, flexibility, and discipline among Regions, Centers, and Headquarterspersonnel to concur on software build contents.

(5)Participate in Operations and Services Improvement Process (OSIP) Gate 1 and 2 Review Teams to identify projects that should be redirected to SREC.

2.Membership, Support Staff, and Appointment.

a.Membership. The SREC consists of voting and non-voting members as follows. Members attend all SREC meetings including executive sessions.

(1)Chairperson and Vice Chairperson.

(2)Field Members. There is one representative from each Region(Eastern, Southern, Central, Western, Alaska, Pacific)

(3)Requirements Members. The requirement representatives are Office of Climate, Water, Weather Services (Metrological Services Division - OS2 and Hydrologic Services Division -OS3).

(4)Data Providers. National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL), National Severe Storms laboratory (NSSL), Regions and local 3rd party sources

(5) Deployment/Maintenance Members. There is one representative from Office of Operational Systems (OPS21).

(6)Training Members. Keep current with AWIPS Release Planning for

inclusion into the National Strategic Training and Education Plan (NSTEP) process.

(7)Support Staff. Support Staff may include but are not limited to:

  1. Voting member substitutes
  2. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs),
  3. Service Area representatives,
  4. AWIPS Prime Contractor,
  5. Other support personnel, and guests.

b.Appointment of Members.

(1)The Chairperson is the AWIPS Program Manager – Steve Schotz

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Charter for the

AWIPS Software Recommendation and Evaluation Committee (SREC)

In Support Of TheAdvanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS)

June 17, 2013

(2)The Vice Chairperson is theOST Development Planning Manager – Robert Rood.

(3)Voting members from each Region, HWSHQ Office, NCEP, NESDISare appointed in writing (email is acceptable) by the Director of each FMC. The current membership is:

a.Eastern Region – Josha Watson

b.Central Region – Greg Noonan

c.Southern Region – Tony Freeman

d.Western Region – Ulysses Davis, Andy Edman,

e.Alaska Region – Carven Scott

f.Pacific Region – Bill Ward, Eric Lau

g.OCWWS Meteorological Services Division – Cindy Woods, Kevin Woodworth, Jason Taylor

h.OCWWS Hydrologic Services Division – Mark Glaudemans, Donna Page

i.OOS – Michael Rega

J. NCEP – Michelle Mainelli, Rebecca Cosgrove, Hui-ya Chuang (EMC)

k. NESDIS – John Paquette

c.Substitute Appointments. In the event an SREC Member is unable to attend a specific meeting, a substitute may attend to represent their Region or NWSHQ office.All members are expected to be present, or send a representative to cast their vote or respond to necessary action items. In the case that a member is not present, is not represented, or has not provided proxy to another member, their vote is forfeited.

3.Responsibilities and Functions

a.Chairperson The AWIPS SREC Chairperson/ViceChairperson supervises distribution of approved candidates and any accompanying information, and supervises preparation and distribution of meeting minutes, including action items.

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Charter for the

AWIPS Software Recommendation and Evaluation Committee (SREC)

In Support Of TheAdvanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS)

June 17, 2013

b.The Vice Chairperson, working with the Chairperson, is responsible for meeting management, scheduling, setting meeting location and time, physical arrangements, chairing the meeting and administrative duties in connection with meetings and records. The Vice Chairperson supervises SREC archives, SREC web page, record and distributing meeting minutes, including action items, within 7 days of the close of each SREC meeting. The Vice Chairperson will maintain official, hardcopy records of all SREC meeting actions.

c.Voting Members:

(1)Reviewing all material provided in advance of meetings;

(2)Developing a coordinated Regional/NWSHQ Office position on validated candidates to aid in prioritizing the software build contents;

(3)Attending SREC meetings;

(4)Exercising vote. In the event the Voting Member is absent, a substitute can vote or represent their Region/NWSHQ Office

(6)Reviewing and commenting on meeting minutes.

d.Area Advocates/ OSIP Integrated Work Team Leads. They will make assessments of proposed software changes, including, but not limited to, readiness of the candidate, political importance, any external views, or dependencies.

  1. Support Staff are not appointed and may provide technical assistance and studies at the request of a SREC member. The primary responsibility of Support Staff is to assist the SREC in obtaining information necessary for the voting members to make informed decisions and assign appropriate priority for their respective agencies. Support Staff may attend sessions by invitation to provide presentations to the SREC.

4.SREC Meeting Structure and Procedures

1

Charter for the

AWIPS Software Recommendation and Evaluation Committee (SREC)

In Support Of TheAdvanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS)

June 17, 2013

a.Meeting Schedule. The SREC meetings will occur the last Monday of the month starting at 2:00pm Eastern time. The Vice Chairperson will coordinate the meeting calendar with the SREC Members and announce the dates, times, and location of the coming meeting.

b.Meeting Structure. An agenda will be formulated and presented to the group for review and additions one week before the meeting.

c.SREC Process.

(1)Define Development Allocation (yearly). The SREC will define the percentages of development time to allocate to the three categories, Infrastructure, Strategic, and Adaptive and Corrective Maintenance (includes small enhancements)

(2)Gather Potential Candidates (continuously). Candidates can come from two sources;SREC Request Form or AWIPS Small Enhancement request. These candidates must be fully mature before they are accepted by the SRECVice Chairperson. “Mature” is defined as:

  1. Proposed Solution and Concept of Operations are accurate, unambiguous, fully specified, consistent and complete
  2. Date Requested or Needed is provided
  3. Rationale/Justification/Drivers are available
  4. Operational Scenarios/Use case - optional
  5. Requirements are provided to support any AWIPS development (configuration/software)
  6. Data Source and Data Product Information (resolution, cycles, variables) is available
  7. Any information about resources to support this candidate (funding, developers, prototype)

(3)Add New Candidates to the SREC Master List (weekly). A master list will be created and maintained by the Vice Chairperson. The Master List will be broken down into three categories:

  1. Infrastructure -Changes to adapt to new technology (software and hardware), and to enhance system performance, stability, development and maintainability.
  2. Strategic - This group consists of items that advance the state of the AWIPS system. Strategic, NWS Roadmap, AOPs, Directives, NWS Management Council, AWIPS Extended. These are considered must do’s.
  3. Adaptive and Corrective Maintenance (Operational) -Enhance existing applications and services to accommodate new products or process and produce immediate and substantial return given the time and resources invested in their implementation. These are nearer term or more mature items and lower hanging fruit.
  4. Small Enhancements – Operational DRs (> 80 hours of development and testing LOE). A small enhancement is adaptive maintenance to the AWIPS software, files or scripts that change or expand previously accepted requirements or preventative maintenance that corrects potential failures or degradation of service levels. The small enhancement is not a correction to an approved requirement; that is a DR. The small enhancement must meet the following criteria:
  5. Requirements are clearly and concisely documented so that there is little risk of the wrong change being made and the risk on forecaster operations at implementation is a small.
  6. Requirements are validates by the development organization with the originator and other stakeholders.
  7. Affects only one system (AWIPS)
  8. Only AWIPS development and integration resources are required
  9. Can be accomplished within one AWIPS Release
  10. The development effort for a small enhancement is expected to be less than 80 hours
  11. No direct cost for project implementation, minimal recurring cost, logistics or maintenance cost and no anticipated future replacement or upgrade cost.
  12. Technical considerations:
  13. No security impacts
  14. Data is less than 50 mbytes/hr and familiar (low risk) data stream
  15. Communication traffic volume will not impact terrestrial WAN or SBN
  16. Utilization of CPU, RAM, disk I/O, Lan network I/O and disk storage likely to increase less than 1% of total available on target platform
  17. No impact on existing critical interfaces

(4)Gather Supporting Material (quarterly). The Vice Chairperson will gather the following material to support SREC prioritization.

  1. ROM for development, testing, and training (small < 1 month, Low < 3 months, Medium 6, High > 12 months)
  2. Preliminary system analysis including SBN bandwidth

The Vice Chairperson will validate that the requirements are “Fully Developed”.

(5)Evaluate and Prioritize Candidates for Integration into the AWIPS Baseline (quarterly). SREC members will evaluate and prioritize software content recommendations, based on field priorities, LOE, and maturity, for integration into the AWIPS baseline. Weighted averages will be used to compile voting based on each members ranking from 1-4 for application development and new data.

(6)Prepare Target Release (quarterly). OST/SEC members will conduct a high level analysis on the top priority recommendations. This analysis will include impacts, level of effort, and resources available to fulfill need.

  1. Assignment to Development organization
  2. Conduct a high level analysis on the top priority recommendations. This include:
  3. Prepare Work Breakdown Structure,
  4. Identify special Testing Requirements
  5. Prepare Development Level of Effort (likely, pessimistic)
  6. Prepare Integration Level of Effort (likely, pessimistic)
  7. Assign task to Releases
  8. Based on SREC weighting, AWIPS budget, Developer availability, prototype availability, Development Organization expertise, development allocation, Integration testing resources, and release schedule, risk
  9. Based on detailed systems engineering, data analysis (e.g., SBN), communications impact, hardware requirements, and cost as analyzed by the OST/SEC Analysis Branch

(7)Validate/Approve Release Content

  1. The Chairperson will present the content of builds to the SREC Committee for approval or revision. The SREC members will have the opportunity to modify the build contents as appropriate based on this analysis.
  2. The Chairperson will present the content of target releases to the BCCB for approval or revision. The AWIPS BCCB shall be the governing authority for deciding on the change content and schedule for the software changes to the operational AWIPS baseline including AWIPS operational baseline hardware, new or modified data inputs into AWIPS, new or modified data and/or product outputs disseminated from AWIPS, and AWIPS Network changes including changes associated with AWIPS interfaces to external systems and networks. The BCCB will provide an approved release number.

(8) Prepared AWIPS Request for Change (RC) for AWIPS CCB approval (per release)

(9)Update SREC Website with Release Material (weekly)

5.Resources and Funding

Individual Regions and Offices will be responsible to support their SREC member’s activities and any necessary travel expenses. The Vice Chairperson may request additional AWIPS SREC resources from the AWIPS Program Manager.

6.Revision of SREC Charter

a.The SREC Charter may be modified upon petition to the Chairperson.

b.The SREC Charter will be reviewed and revalidated by the Chairperson every year.

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