Project
Background
The
client, a state agency responsible for developing energy policy, wanted an
analysis of use cases being developed by a consortium of utilities and vendors
for use in specifying the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems,
including the interface with home area networks (HAN) and home automation
systems. Based on informal reviews of the consortium’s use cases, the client
felt there were assumptions that might limit customer choice and privacy in the
AMI-HAN interface, and limit vendor choice of communication technologies used
in their systems. The client wanted to
use the results of the analysis in developing policy recommendations for an AMI-HAN
interface that would support customer
participation in Demand Response without compromising their privacy and support an open market
for HAN vendors.
L’Monte’s
tasks were to identify a project plan for accomplishing the client’s goals, manage the
project and
produce regulatory use cases and policy recommendations for the AMI-HAN
interface.
The Process
After setting up a small task
force of client and consultant subject matter experts, Diane Pepetone, L’Monte’s lead requirements engineer, facilitated a project
chartering session with them to define the project scope and project metrics, and
identify a plan of action, which started with the analysis of the consotrium use cases.
From her analysis, Ms
Pepetone developed Venn diagrams to
represent how the consortium use cases would affect all the key players. The interaction between the spheres of
the customer, the vendor and the utility made it clear that there were areas of
overlap that implied a level of control by the utilities that was of concern. Using
this as a jumping off point, Ms. Pepetone led several sessions with the task
force to develop regulatory use case scenarios that represented desirable
options for customers and vendors as well as utilities.
From the regulatory use case scenarios, Ms Pepetone developed
right-obligation activity models which made explicit what rights and
obligations were implied in the regulatory use case scenarios. After several rounds of reviewing right-obligation
models, making changes to the regulatory use cases and deriving the new right-obligation
models, the client had a set of regulatory use cases and rights and obligations
that could be used in policy recommendations.
Project Outcome
This
project introduced the client to the use of requirements engineering for
defining policy. Using the Venn diagrams
proved very powerful in representing overlaps of authority and control between
the utility, the customer and the vendor.
The use case scenarios allowed the task force to work out what options
they felt should be offered in the AMI-HAN interface, and the right and
obligation modeling showed them how those options would affect each of the key
players.
Although
not in the original project plan, the client decided that results warranted
preparing a research report, which Ms Pepetone prepared and presented to state
energy commissioners, state public utility commissioners, representatives of
the major utilities and other key stakeholders.