The objective of Task 4.3 was to carry out the testing of the Stage Gate design tool in order to verify that it meets all the previously defined requirements (in WP2 and T4.1). This report documents the outcome of T4.3 “Verification of the Stage Gate design tool.”
The goal of the verification task was to ensure that the tool:
- responds correctly to a varied set of inputs;
- performs its functions in an acceptable time and reasonable use of computational resource;
- is adequate in terms of usability and
- is verified against control data.
The following actions were completed as part of the verification and are described in detail in this report:
- Definition of the Verification Cases and evaluation criteria
- Organisation of training sessions (for technical and industrial partners)
- Collection of data for each Verification Case
- Running the Verification Cases (by technical and industrial partners)
- Analysis of the results based on quantitative and qualitative assessments
- Creation of a task list of changes that could improve the tool to improve performance.
A stable beta version of the tool is now available that is fully documented with a technical manual and a user manual. The tool will be further validated and demonstrated using real data from the first pilot experiences in WP7.
According to the quantitative results, the end-users involved in evaluating the SG tool are satisfied with the usability, user-friendliness, performance, and value of the software. The qualitative assessment feedback gathered some improvements that were compiled and categorised. As a result of this, 13 high priority improvement areas were selected to be implemented in the final release of the DTOceanPlus suite of design tools.