Project manage your models

As ControlDraw has been used over the years by people working on large projects, there has of course been a spotlight on the progress of the development of the models. As a result of this there are now many facilities in CD to track and manage progress. For example the ability to set the Review status of diagrams, and to lock them when key milestones are achieved, the backup archive, the Reviewer and the compare functions. So, here quickly are the main functions that you should use for project managing your models.

First, backups and issues
Backing up is more than just a matter of not losing your models, it is a way of taking a snapshot of a model that can be used for comparison later.







Handling Review Meetings

Before - Backup (or better raise the Issue) and save the backup in an archive (ControlDraw makes this very easy)- then review the archive, do not develop the model in a review meeting. If you want to develop the model in a meeting call it a development meeting. And backup before.


After - use reviewer to compare before and after

Next , Diagram Review Status
Each diagram in a model has a review status, which you set from the diagram details or the list of diagrams in >Database >Views
You can use these to establish the progress on each diagram.
It is also good practise to lock diagram once they have been approved, issued for implementation and so on. As well as preventing accidental change to a diagram, locking them enables the finest level of version control whereby you can unlock a diagram, edit it, and then record the changes along with the reason for them.