eDEP Users Group: minutes of first meeting

9 June 2008

Attendees : / José SEIXO
Mohamed ELLEJMI
Vladimir BUBALO
Stéphane DUBUISSON
Leo VAN DER HOORN
Marc GRAVIS
Gerard RAMBAUD
Alan FOWLER
Jan SCHOLZ
Christopher COSTELLOE
Mike VERE
Mike BALLONE / EEC/RIF
EEC/RIF
RST
EEC/APT
EEC/AVT
EEC/AVT
EEC/AVT
CIMACT/LARA
CIMACT/LARA
FASTI
Graffica
Graffica
Apologies : / Hervé PARVAIS
Karim ZEGHAL
Bogdan PETRICEL
Christopher BRAIN
Dan ROBERTS
Gary KING
Laurent GUICHARD
Sandrine GUIBERT / EEC/RIF
EEC/ATC
FASTI
FASTI
NATS
NATS
CATS
CATS
Author of Minutes : / Mohamed ELLEJMI

Agenda

The following agenda was distributed by e-mail prior to the meeting:

Time / Item / Subject / Leader/Presenter /
09:30 / Arrival at EEC, reception, coffee
10:00 / 1 / Welcome by RIF and introduction of all participants / Hervé PARVAIS
José SEIXO
Mohamed ELLEJMI
10:10 / 2 / ITWP Project / Stéphane DUBUISSON
Roger Lance
10:30 / 3 / FASTI Project / PETRICEL Bogdan;
BRAIN Christopher;
COSTELLOE Christopher;
10:50 / 4 / CIMACT and LARA Projects / SCHOLZ Jan;
FOWLER Alan;
11:10 / 5 / AVT Project / VAN DER HOORN Leo;
GRAVIS Marc;
RAMBAUD Gerard
11:30 / --- Coffee---
12:00 / 6 / RST Project / BUBALO Vladimir;
12:20 / 7 / Demo on HF Lab Platform / ELLEJMI Mohamed
13:00 / --- Lunch ---
14:00 / 8 / How eDEP is developed
eDEP Users Group Synergy
Q&A session / Mike Vere
Mike Ballone
15:15 / --- Coffee---
15:40 / 9 / Road Map and Future development / Seixo José
ELLEJMI Mohamed
16:00 / conclusions of the day / All participants
16:30 / Return transport


Approval of the Agenda

José opened the meeting welcoming the participants. Hervé, who was involved in another urgent meeting, apologized and asked José to chair the meeting. Participants introduced themselves, agenda was approved and the presentations started.

You will find joined to the minutes the presentations of the different projects.

1.  Project Presentation

-  ITWP Presentation by Stéphane Dubuison,

-  FASTI project by Christopher COSTELLOE,

-  CIMACT and LARA projects by Alan FOWLER,

-  AVT project by Leo VAN DER HOORN and

-  RST project by Vladimir BUBALO

After the different presentations and due to time spent on questions and answers on each presentation, it was decided to put the different demos at the end of the meeting.

2.  Graffica presentation

Graffica provided a presentation about:

-  The company

-  History of eDEP

-  Current development

-  Suggestions for eDEP User Group

3.  eDEP core contract manager presentation

Mohamed presented the result of the previous contract in term of development and EUROCONTROL investment.

He made the point on the actual contract and the different projects involved.

A presentation of how the contract is formulated was provided to the users

4.  eDEP users Group objectives

After Mohamed presentation, José proposed a brainstorming session on the benefit of eDEP Users Group.

Vladimir sees the UG as an opportunity to:

-  coordinate the requirements and the developments: EEC as focal point for developments

-  ensure the continuation of the eDEP platform development

-  learn from other projects how to improve training facilities with more advanced systems.

-  Improve the knowledge of the platform capabilities

Vladimir suggests to make the requirements available via the website: change request database available for all users. (see Vladimir presentation for benefits and inconvenient of centralizing development)

For Stéphane, as ITWP will be used for the SESAR validation, the quality shall be an issue to rise.

Leo stated that the eDEP user group provides a synergy with the other users such as APT and can be used as a change control board.

Leo pointed out the following weaknesses:

-  A catalog describing a description of eDEP capabilities is missing and he suggested to share that eDEP catalog with the others users via the onesky website for example.

-  A lack of documents describing the operation (exploitation) part: configuration files are not enough clear and detailed

-  Same remark for airspace adaptation

-  Missing a database to manage exercise data

Christy sees the users group as an opportunity to improve the relations and synergy between different EUROCONTROL projects. He expects a better integration of FASTI tools in eDEP. He wants eDEP process to remain “mean and lean”

Mike Ballone thinks that the users group:

-  can provide an upfront information from projects

-  synchronize the requirements

-  manage the priorities

-  ensure a good quality product while delivering requirements in a short time

-  allow users to better share information about their projects.

His main concern is about timely requirements

For Graffica, there is a need to provide a window for the development to mitigate the time pressure.

Jan considers the users group as a forum of feedback where the requirements are shared and not developed twice.

He is concerned about potential lack of flexibility, reactivity (they were used to have changes very quickly).

He aims to make their users happy and do not want to turn to the negative part (source code not available, etc)

Alan put emphasis on the following points:

-  How do users share information between projects?

-  How do users manage requirements coming from different sources

-  He requires robustness and safety

-  He aims to be flexible (he admitted this is difficult to achieve)

-  He wants to reduce individual project costs

Action No / Person responsible / Action to be taken / Status / Due Date /
1 / Mohamed / Create eDEP Users Group on OneSky / Created / 30/08/2008

5.  A.O.B.

No other issues were discussed during the meeting

6.  Date and place of next meeting

It was decided to meet before the launching of next contract, the place and data were not agreed

1.  Annex 1: Members references

Name/Forename / Project / E-mail address
BUBALO Vladimir / RST /
DUBUISSON Stéphane / APT /
LANE Roger /
VAN DER HOORN Leo / AVT /
GRAVIS Marc /
RAMBAUD Gérard /
SCHOLZ Jan; / CIMACT/LARA /
FOWLER Alan /
PARVAIS Hervé / EEC /
SEIXO José /
ELLEJMI Mohamed /
PETRICEL Bogdan / FASTI /
BRAIN Christopher /
COSTELLOE Christopher /

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