diff --git a/FirstContact.tex b/FirstContact.tex index 6ea1964..f799c5d 100644 --- a/FirstContact.tex +++ b/FirstContact.tex @@ -29,7 +29,8 @@ \chapter{First Contact} \chalabel{FirstContact} -You are part of a team developing a software system named \emph{proDoc} which supports doctors in their da The main functional requirements concern (i) maintaining patient files and (ii) keeping track of the money to be paid by patients and health insurances. The health care legislation in Switzerland is quite complicated and changes regularly, hence there are few competitors to worry about. Nevertheless, a fresh start-up company has recently acquired considerable market-share with a competing product named \emph{XDoctor}. The selling features of \emph{XDoctor} are its platform independency and its integration with the internet. The system offers a built-in e-mail client and web-browser. \emph{XDoctor} also exploits the internet for the transaction processing with the health insurances. +You are part of a team developing a software system named \emph{proDoc} which supports doctors in their day-to-day operations. +The main functional requirements concern (i) maintaining patient files and (ii) keeping track of the money to be paid by patients and health insurances. The health care legislation in Switzerland is quite complicated and changes regularly, hence there are few competitors to worry about. Nevertheless, a fresh start-up company has recently acquired considerable market-share with a competing product named \emph{XDoctor}. The selling features of \emph{XDoctor} are its platform independency and its integration with the internet. The system offers a built-in e-mail client and web-browser. \emph{XDoctor} also exploits the internet for the transaction processing with the health insurances. To ensure its position in the market, your company has purchased \emph{XDoctor} and now wants to recover as much as possible from the deal. In particular, they want to lift the internet functionality out of \emph{XDoctor} to reuse it into \emph{proDoc}. You are asked to make a first evaluation and develop a plan on how to merge the two products into one. At the outset, there is very little known about the technical details of the competing product. From the original development team of four persons, only one has joined your company. His name is Dave and he has brought a large box to your office containing lots of paper (the documentation?) and two CDs. The first is the \emph{XDoctor} installation disk containing an installer for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The other contains about 500,000 lines of Java code and another 10,000 lines of C code. Looking kind of desperately at this box sitting on your desk, you're wondering ``Where on earth do I start?''