This page provides a model of our understanding of the essential requirements for the SKOPE system. The model is based on the approach described in the book Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design (Gause & Weinberg,1989) and comprises three types of elements: users, functions, and attributes.
The purpose of this model is to ensure that we are building the right system.
System Users
In this model a user represents someone who (1) will be affected in some way by the SKOPE system, and (2) we choose to take into account when designing, implementing, or deploying the system.
Researcher | Scholar in the social and natural sciences who wants browser-based access to the best-available reconstructions of key environmental variables for a given location and temporal interval. |
Tinkerer | Researcher with a more focused interest in a specific reconstruction model, and who wishes to adjust parameters and rerun the models. |
Modeler | Researcher who seeks to build and offer broad access to new or modified models and/or retrodicted environmental data through SKOPE. |
Data provider | Representative of an organization that has granted to SKOPE users access to their data via the SKOPE system. |
System Administrator | Technical staff person responsible for deploying, configuring, or administering all or part of an instance of the SKOPE system. |
Developer | |
System Functions
These are the essential capabilities of the system expressed as things that the system does or that users do with the system.
System Attributes
Sometimes referred to as non-functional requirements, system attributes are those desirable, positive characteristics of the system that distinguish it from alternative approaches to performing the same functions.