The engineering environment (EE) sums up all hardware and software systems, network infrastructure and peripheral equipment required to do the daily work as well as project based activities.
The basic engineering environment (BEE) defines all the EE components required to do daily work and to be the basis of running systems that are not project specific. The advanced engineering environment (AEE) defines all the additional components that are necessary to do the specialized project work and thus are project specific. The third part is the individual engineering environment (IEE) that defines all the components required by the individual co-worker that does not have to be project specific, but are to support the individual way of doing the things that have to be done. The last one is optional and should only be used when no other way is possible.
Benefits from using EE's
The goal of creating and defining EE’s is to predict stability, performance and other quality features of the systems used as well as costs (TCO), availability (time), and service amount required to maintain or adapt the system. A very useful side effect is the reduction of errors during the development process by avoiding external problems as follows:
1. Reduce errors caused by administration of the system (different configurations lead to different behavior of systems, that may be recognized as findings).
2. Reduce errors caused by compatibility problems among the co-workers machines.
3. Ensure that all tools that have to be used are tested, quality approved, licensed in an economic way (smart licensing strategies are difficult but safe a lot of money).
4. Ensure that the interaction of all system parts works properly and the whole system is adjusted for the actual projects needs at its best.
5. Ensure that each EE is saved as an image to enable service guys to restore it in case of crashes within the guaranteed time span (internal and external SLA’s) and in a defined way.
6. Images of an EE enable archiving for later access onto a project freeze for further development in an immediately running system, that ensures a fast project start when small changes have to be done that don’t include porting the legacy system.
7. Enable the project management and the company's management board to establish a sustainable and economically efficient strategy for licensing, upgrading and reusing software licenses, hardware components and process definitions.
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taken from the lectures about Q-Course
