Okay,
Seems good to me Terry, with the exception of some of it being out of date - for example, we talk about evaluating capacitive probes now, and considering using PoE for our power supply system, but we've already decided for/against these things.
Hamish
Overall System Design Specification
Re: Overall System Design Specification
Hamish,
I think your objections to the points you mention come down to what is usually considered to be the accepted style in Design documents. In a traditional engineering environment, Design Specifications are normally written after the Requirements have been accepted and before the design is implemented. Once the system has been developed, they will normally be updated, but the use of 'will' is still considered acceptable to avoid changing everything to 'is'. In short 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' has generally been the way to minimise the workload at the end of the project.
Taking your two examples; the mention of PoE falls into that category and the statement would normally stay as it is, even though it has already been done. The capacitive probe has been evaluated, but it hasn't been abandoned; we simply tried other methods, that's all.
In time, this document will need a full overhaul, but at this stage, I was simply putting it forward as a reasonable example of how to write a design document, so the content doesn't have to be bang up to date anyway. We can explain this at the first meeting with the students.
Penri,
Do you feel that this document is 'good enough' to be used as a template in this instance or does it need more work?
I think your objections to the points you mention come down to what is usually considered to be the accepted style in Design documents. In a traditional engineering environment, Design Specifications are normally written after the Requirements have been accepted and before the design is implemented. Once the system has been developed, they will normally be updated, but the use of 'will' is still considered acceptable to avoid changing everything to 'is'. In short 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' has generally been the way to minimise the workload at the end of the project.
Taking your two examples; the mention of PoE falls into that category and the statement would normally stay as it is, even though it has already been done. The capacitive probe has been evaluated, but it hasn't been abandoned; we simply tried other methods, that's all.
In time, this document will need a full overhaul, but at this stage, I was simply putting it forward as a reasonable example of how to write a design document, so the content doesn't have to be bang up to date anyway. We can explain this at the first meeting with the students.
Penri,
Do you feel that this document is 'good enough' to be used as a template in this instance or does it need more work?
Terry
