Figure 15-1: Categories worksheet with categories file loaded
Revolve allows you to populate effort estimation Excel workbooks directly. You populate a Revolve worksheet and assign categories to the items in it. The names of these categories represent the types of issues your analysis has uncovered. The categories assigned to the Points of Interest (POIs) are the basis for estimating the coding and testing effort required to address them. You then extract the worksheet to a flat file, and load it into an estimation workbook.
There are two inputs to the Revolve worksheet effort template:
A default version of the categories file is supplied in your Revolve installation directory in Config\Reports\categories.txt. This file contains categories for the default Revolve worksheet database template. As you add new categories to your project, you can update the default categories file, or merge it with category names found in your worksheet to create a project-specific version. (See the section Worksheet effort extract - update category list below.)
The flat file extract of your project worksheet is created by the analysis tool Worksheet effort extract - POIs. By default, the file is created in your project's Revolve installation directory as <Project directory>\extract_<project name>.txt.
Once you have both files, you can open the worksheet effort template and load the files when prompted for them. For a more detailed explanation of the workbook, see below.
Assume you have added several items to the Revolve worksheet and have assigned categories to them.
Running the Worksheet effort extract - POIs tool will produce semi-colon delimited records, examples of which are:
where:
Each POI will have one record for each category that has been assigned to it.
Running the Worksheet effort extract - update category list tool will produce this output, assuming you have updated the default category file with coding and testing effort levels for some categories:
where:
The Excel Workbook loads the category definitions and the POI file, tallies up the numbers of "hits" for each category name, and computes total coding and testing effort for each category, and for all categories overall.
Revolve includes an Excel workbook template (WorksheetEffortTemplate.xlt) in your Revolve installation directory in Reports. This template, when loaded with the worksheet analysis results, will show the total coding and testing effort required to address the contents of the worksheet. The Excel template is designed to be simple, straightforward, easy to use, and easy to modify.
The estimate is intended only as a rough guide-line. Before using the estimates in your planning, you should update the default coding- and testing-effort levels for each type of worksheet issue. You can change these effort levels on the Categories worksheet or in the categories text file.
The template Welcome page contains instructions for using the workbook. This section of the documentation repeats that overview, and explains the Revolve analysis tools associated with Effort Estimation.
When you open WorksheetEffortTemplate.xlt in Excel, you will first be asked whether to automatically refresh the workbook data. Click Enable automatic refresh to reply.
Excel then prompts you for the two data files required to populate the workbook.
The first data file populates the Categories worksheet. If you have run the analysis tool Worksheet effort extract - update category list, the merged category file will be in your project's <project directory> directory as categories_<project name>.txt. If you haven't run the tool, you can load the default category list from your installation directory in Config\Reports\categories.txt.
The second data file populates the Data worksheet of the template. Navigate to the Analysis directory of your project and select the file. If you run the Worksheet effort extract - POIs tool with its default values, this file is created as <project directory>\extract_<project name>.txt.
Excel then loads the files into the worksheet and displays the Welcome page.
After the categories file is loaded, the Categories worksheet appears like this:
Figure 15-1: Categories worksheet with categories file loaded
where:
New category names might be introduced by the analysis tools as they are run against different Revolve projects. New category names will appear in the effort estimation workbook with default descriptions ("New category: description required") and with default coding and testing efforts (0). You can change these default values either in the Categories worksheet or in the flat file (categories.txt) that is used to populate the worksheet. If you change a value in the loaded worksheet, you will need to recalculate the worksheet to update the effort estimation reports.
This is how the Data worksheet appears after extract_<project name>.txt is loaded.
Figure 15-2: Data worksheet
The reporting unit is set by a drop-down list in cell F1 of the Categories sheet. See the section Modifying the Template below.
Use the Excel Save as menu item to save the populated workbook under a different name, as an Excel workbook (.xls) rather than as a template (.xlt).
When you have run the migration assessment tool, the Revolve worksheet for your project contains a row for each item (statement, program, JCL job, etc.) that is a worksheet issue. Each item in the worksheet is tagged with one or more Category assignments that indicate the types of issues uncovered.
A category represents a type of worksheet issue or an action item. In the Worksheet effort template, each category is associated with a coding effort level, representing the time in man-hours required to fix one instance of that kind of issue. Each category also has an associated testing effort, in man-hours, representing the time to test one fix for the type of issue. You can change these effort levels in the Categories worksheet.
The Worksheet template loads the results of your Worksheet assessment Revolve worksheet and tallies the number of issues of each type (category). It looks up the effort levels associated with each category and arrives at a total coding and testing effort for the application. There are three pivot table reports that display the effort levels and item counts by Category, Component and the type of object (program, data file, etc.). The totals appear at the bottom of each report. The figure below shows an example.
Figure 15-3: Report with totals displayed
You can modify the following items in the template:
You can change the coding and testing effort levels associated with each category in columns C and D of the Categories worksheet. After changing the effort levels, you need to use the pivot table Refresh button to recreate the totals in the reports.
You can set the reporting units on the Categories worksheet by clicking cell F1, and using the down-arrow to select from a drop-down list, as shown in the figure below.
Figure 15-4: Set reporting units on Categories worksheet
Again, you need to click Refresh on the pivot table reports to see the results. Sometimes you will need to save the workbook template, reopen it and reload the flat file to get the proper pivot table results.
You can add new pivot table reports and charts (Data > Pivot table and Chart wizard), based on one of the existing pivot table reports.
To create the files required by the effort estimation worksheet, open your Revolve project and the Analysis Tools list. You might need to click the + by the Worksheet folder to expand the list of worksheet-related tools. Run the Worksheet effort extract - POIs tool to create the extract_<project name>.txt file in your project directory.
The next step is optional. If you have updated the category names, descriptions and effort levels in the default categories file, you can simply load that file into the Excel workbook.
If you have introduced new category names into your project, or if you prefer to have a project-specific category file, you can run the Worksheet effort extract - update category list tool. This will merge the default category list with the category names found in your extract_<project name>.txt POI file and create a new output file called categories_<project name>.txt in your project directory.
Both analysis tools and their settings are described below.
You can review the configuration information for the Worksheet Effort Extract - POIs tool by right-clicking Worksheet effort extract - POIs and clicking Properties.
The Worksheet effort extract - POIs tool has two steps:
To view the properties for each step, right-click the tool entry in the Analysis Tools list, and click Properties.
We do not recommend you change any of the Output or Columns settings for the Worksheet extract to file step, or any of the Files settings for the Convert XML to HTML step, or you might prevent the correct file being produced, or tie the output file name to a specific project. The default settings make it suitable for running with any Revolve project. Both tools use symbolics, rather than actual project directories, to specify file locations. The symbolic names we support are:
| %PROJDIR% | expands to the Revolve project directory |
| %SOLNPROJDIR% | expands to the Revolve Enterprise Edition project directory |
| %PROJNAME% | expands to the name of the Revolve project |
| %PRODDIR% | expands to the directory where you installed Revolve Enterprise Edition |
You can set these file paths to specific values by using the browse buttons or by typing an actual directory path into the entry fields. If you do this, however, you will need to reconfigure the tool for each new Revolve project, since the directories are unlikely to be the same for each project.
You can review the configuration information for this tool by right-clicking Worksheet effort extract - update category list in the Analysis Tools list and clicking Properties.
The tool parameters are:
| Alternate Category File | defaults to Config\Reports\categories.txt in your Revolve installation directory |
| Alternate Extract File | defaults to <project directory>\extract_<project name>.txt |
| Alternate Output File | defaults to <project directory>\categories_<project name>.txt |
| Convert category names to upper case? | defaults to true |
| Enable as composite tool? | does not create an output set by default |
The tool also creates a log file and a backup file in the same directory as the output file.
| <output file name>._log.txt | Contains the log messages from the tool execution. If there are any problems with the template, check this file for messages. |
Copyright © 2007 Micro Focus (IP) Ltd. All rights reserved.