MINUTES OF THE ANSA MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

held on

13th October 1997 at APM, Cambridge

Present: Bill, O'Riordan (Chairman), Andrew Herbert (Chief Architect), Yvonne Peat (Secretary), Richard Hayton (APM), Chris Mayers (APM), Eric Palmer (APM), Bob Briscoe (BT), Jean-Bernard Stefani (CNET), Ian Davies (GPT), Neil Mason (GPT), Peter Wharton (ICL)

Apologies Martin French (TC Chairman), David Hearn (DERA), Dr Matsuo (Fujitsu), Andrew Farncombe (GEC-Marconi),

Welcome and review of Agenda

1 MINUTES AND ACTIONS

The minutes of the last joint MC/TC meeting were approved and signed. There were no matters arising and all actions had been completed..

2 STATUS OF ANSA CONSORTIUM

Andrew confirmed the situation regarding the contracts, they are: ANSA Sponsorship Agreement, and the Project Management Agreement. He confirmed the current membership and their status regarding payment. BT stated that it will make the results of its review in February 1998 available to the other ANSA Sponsors.

Cross membership with OMG. It was agreed that Richard Soley and Andrew Watson be nominated to the ANSA TC.

University links, it was decided to maintain links with Newcastle and Cambridge.

The Chairman suggested a presentation to BSI as a possible opportunity.

MC, TC Chairman - Due to work commitments Martin French feels that it is no longer appropriate for him to be TC Chairman. It was decided that Bill O’Riordan should fulfil both roles.

APM undertook not to make any changes to the contract with Fujitsu without the consent of the Management Committee.

A discussion followed concerning the public release of code and documents to enhance ANSA visibility. The consensus was that there should be a philosophy of making information available, but preserving the right of sponsors to take early and full advantage of ANSA results. A process in which the Chief Architect makes proposals for release of documents and software to the MC with a one month deadline for veto. Released code should available for evaluation use only, a licence being required for exploitation. In general it was felt that code should be protected for twelve months and that technical documents should be treated like code.

3 CONSORTIUM CO-ORDINATOR - BILL O'RIORDAN

The Sponsorship Agreement requires a co-ordinating sponsor. This has been in abeyance since Nortel left the consortium. The role of co-ordinator is one of ensuring liaison between the sponsors, auditing APM's project execution and, on the approval of the Management Committee accepting applications to join the consortium. APM offered to become the co-ordinating sponsor. The liaison function between sponsors would be made the responsibility of Bill O'Riordan. To ensure proper auditing APM have informally asked Eric Palmer, now retired from Nortel, if he would be prepared to act on behalf of the sponsors monitoring APM and reporting at each Management Committee.

He would monitor:

  • APM's effort, labour rate and expenditure against project budget

    Adherence to the work plan (i.e. that claimed effort is chargeable)

    Hand over of deliverables

    Management and recording of commitments

    • None of the other sponsors volunteered to take on the position but BT expressed reservations and GPT were worried about APM "marking its own homework". Eric explained that he would be independent, being employed by the consortium not APM.

    It was felt there was still a need to clearly define the Co-ordinating Sponsor role and that having a sponsor other than APM was the correct long term solution..

    Action: AJH

    Yvonne Peat to issue an updated contact list to sponsors so that they can contact Eric or Bill without having to approach APM.

    Action: YP

    4 RELATED ACTIVITIES - ANDREW HERBERT

    Both as a sponsor, and under the rights granted in the ANSA agreements, APM has taken ANSA results into ESPRIT projects and related activities. These have made visible to the Consortium and IPR issues etc made visible. A brief update was given.

    RETINA (ACTS)

    DCAN (DTI HPIP)

    PEGASUS-II (ESPRIT Basic Research)

    TRENDS (ESPRIT)

    E2S (ESPRIT)

    FOLLOWME (ESPRIT)

    ObjectLab (APM)

    ANSA Associates (APM)

    BT Suggest Andrew should go and talk to Lancaster University as they are currently working in a similar area to FlexiNet.

    Action: AJH

    5 TECHNICAL PROGRESS - RICHARD HAYTON

    Richard presented an overall progress summary including the deliverables since last meeting. The plan for the next quarter was presented including the topics for Technical Committee meeting.

    The Chairman commented that it proved that the team got on with the job without support from Management and thanked Richard for pulling it all together.

    6 FINANCIAL REPORT - ERIC PALMER

    Eric went through Budget / Staffing / Effort / Costs figures since last meeting. He reported on the current status of payments and went through the capital budget.

    The sponsors were happy with the figures which showed APM through leveraging ESPRIT projects had been able to deliver more ANSA effort than was directly covered by income from sponsors.

    7 WORK PLAN FOR 1998 PROJECT YEAR - ANDREW HERBERT

    The members liked the quarterly rolling programme, next quarter set, following quarter fairly well defined, ideas for following quarters less defined dependent upon direction MC/TC wants on results of current work. They would like to review the programme at each meeting to check the direction.

    It was also requested that the TC meeting be first in future.

    8 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

    The Chairman proposed that the title Management Board is a far more positive title than Management Committee and that the ANSA MC and TC should in future be referred to as the Management Board and Technical Board. The motion was carried.

    All the presentations given at the meeting and copies of referenced documents and software will be available from the ANSA sponsors web site.

    9 DATE OF NEXT MEETING

    Technical Board Thursday 8th January (all day) with a dinner in the evening and the Management Board on Friday 9th January (half day ending with lunch).

    Close

    Chris Phoenix then presented a Digitivity Update