Direct Capture of Objectives (DCO)

Overview

Pega defines Direct Capture Of Objectives as “a set of Application rules and wizards designed to capture and tie the business objectives, project goals, requirements and use cases to actual implementation”.

DCO currently comes packaged with all version of PRPC 5.3 SP1 and onwards. But DCO SP2 which is its latest version is supported only by PRPC 5.4. The rules for this utility is part of the Pega-AppDefinition Ruleset which is packaged as PegaRULES_DirectCapture Application.

Pega sees DCO to be a way of maintaining Requirment Tracebility and reduce costs due to rework and fixing bugs created during the course of fixing some bugs. It ensures accountability because it can check if all the requirements/use cases has been met/addressed.

Key Components of DCO:

(1) Application Profile :Application profile is an Auto-Generated word document designed to help the information gathering phase of the a project life’s cycle. The document is created as part of an automated tool called the Application Profile Wizard. The wizard guides the user through each step on what data it would need for it to generate the AP document. The data that is input into this wizard finally produces 3 components.
a) Application Profile document : This document provides a holistic view of the application with all the business requirements, use cases and other details (org structure, class structure, rulesets, frameworks etc.) of the application.
b) Project Sizing and Estimation Document : This is the sizing and estimation document of how much effort would it be for the actual development of the application.
c) Application Accelerator : this is the wizard that generates all the rules that defines the application. Based on the input to the Application Profile, the accelerator creates all the rules starting from the Org Structure to rulesets to flow etc.
These profiles are typically worked upon by Business Analysts, Lead Pega Architects and some developers who gather and define the business requirements and also the implementation strategy. Pega insists that the effort to enter these information into the application profile would take about ‘2-3’ days of dedicated effort. The users can save the information they capture during the middle of creating the application profile and before the creation of the application.The template for the document is saved as a PegaAccel-Task-ProposeApp.ApplicationProfile. This rule file can be customized to the users standard and have them generate the information.

(2) Application Accelerator : The Application Accelerator is a wizard that automates the creation of applications or application frameworks or even extends existing framework. The Application Accelerator has been the part and parcel of old PRPC versions starting from 4.2 SP4. The AA in the latest version of PRPC is a more robust tool when compared to its earlier Avtaars. The wizard in the current release can be run independently or also as a part of the application Profiler. Just like the Application Profiler which captures information regarding Work Details, Actors, Roles, Requirements, reports and correspondence, the AA too provides a set of guided screen flows to the user to capture the information. If the AA is part of the AP then, the data entered into the AP is what gets carried onto the application.

(3) Application Document Wizard :This is a new feature available only on DCO SP2. This wizard creates a set of application specific documents to be used by the business and developers, all throughout the project life cycle. These documents are based on some predefined templates which can be customized for by the clients. The uses can select the contents that need to pulled out onto the document and also provide a template to define the way it would be pulled out. To update they use the PegaAccel-Task-DocumentApp.ProjectDocument & ApplicationDocument.

The wizard also can capture screenshots of the existing application to be used as a reference in the profile document. This screen capture functionality is pretty useful during creating training manuals. The wizard also creates ER Diagrams based on the classes/class structure within the application. The ERD are stored as a .vdx file.

(4) Requirement Document Rules : A new feature as part of DCO SP2, this are rules which are used by Pega to define business requirements. They are part of the Rule-Application-Requirement Class. Requirements are provided by the final uses/owners of the application, but by definition it can be defined as an inventory of events, conditions, or functions that need to be satisfied and tracked in the project. The requirement rules are captured as part of the application profile which is then carried onto the Application accelerator which creates the requirement rules. These rules are then modified and tracked throughout the project life-cycle. DCO also provided for a Traceability Matrix that keeps track of changes to the business functionality and the rules that are impacted due to that change.
The rules that reference Requirement rules include
.Application Rules
.Use Case Rules
.Flow Ruels

(5) Use Case Requirement Rules : Also a new feature of DCO SP2 which allows the business users upload their use cases into the application. The Use Case rule is an instance of Rule-Application-UseCase which the uses inputs during the application profile data entry stage. Pega expects all the use cases to be atomic as that is what is tracked within the system. The application expects that the use cases should be detailed enough as it makes it easier for the developer to code.
The rules that reference Use Case Rules include
#Application Rules
#Flow Rules
#Local and Flow Actions
#New Harnesses via the starting shape of a flow
#Activities


References: The content collected from Pega PDN site. For more details check PDN site.