A tool for design traceability management

The Crew-Centered Cockpit Design (CCCD) Program, administered by the Human Systems Center´s Armstrong Laboratory, has attacked the heart of potential communication problems with a software tool named the Design Traceability Manager (DTM). The DTM provides the design team with three useful and practical capabilities: assistance in managing a crew-system design project, guidance through and maintenance of the Crew-Centered System Design Process (CSDP) and design traceability, or the ability to track the rationale behind an evolving design. The DTM is being built with flexibility and versatility in mind. The DTM user sees an intuitive graphical interface that was constructed using an X-Windows-compliant Graphical User Interface (GUI) builder. Behind that interface is a powerful Informix multi-user relational data base management system, capable of storing and organizing a wealth of project-related data. At the core of DTM is the UNIX operating system, offering portability to today´s most popular scientific/engineering platforms. While DTM is currently focused on crew system development, it is applicable to any domain in which a team of developers is applying a defined methodology to the accomplishment of a system design. The purpose of this paper is to describe the DTM design, its current implementation status, and its contributions to the successful completion of a design project