1 The status of the project

1.1 Overall

The P2 phase has been a success; the fundamental functionality has been implemented, and the team is pursuing to polish the overall product for the delivery. There was no need to cut any features, so the risk control on that part was unnecessary. Of course, there are concerns, and the utmost pressure comes from the testing of the product - an OS environment is not trivial to test. However, the fundamental units of the product (the compiler, virtual machine, scheduler, heap, terminal) have been in use for so long and under such heavy use, that there should only be minor issues coming out from the final testing. The documentation work has paused for a while during the implementation effort, but we are feeling confident in that field too.

Overall, the project has demanded huge effort from the group, and there are signs of stress, but it seems that the spirit of the group has risen significantly, especially when there was evidence that the specified functionality had been implemented.

1.2 Schedule

We had an internal deadline which determined a "feature freeze" point by the end of the P2 phase, and we met that deadline. The amount of work has been roughly at the anticipated level, which is more than the original plan stated. As the list of added functionality was quite long, so was the time spent implementing the features. We anticipate that the workload for the final phase will exceed the original plans, as testing and documentation will take its time.

1.3 Used time resources

Updated: 22.03 20:19	AH	PH	JK	VH				Total	Planned	Difference
Meetings
Intra-group	6	6	6	6				24	24	0
With client and supervisor	2	2	2					6	2	4
Project management
Scheduling	2	4						6	4	2
Design
Specifications	2							2	2	0
Design	4			2				6	10	-4
Coding
General programming	30	26	22	33				111	32	79
Testing
System testing	4	6	5	8				23	32	-9
Documentation
Documentation	6	5	8	12				31	32	-1
Host maintenance
Host maintenance								0	3	-3
Total	56	49	43	61	0	0	0	209	141	68

2 Accomplished tasks

The main emphasis for the P2 phase has been on the implementation of the remaining features and documenting the testing process concurrently.

2.1 Functionality

The new features that were introduced during this phase:

• Digital UNIX port (Alpha hardware)
• Migration
• Persistence (not yet tested)
• External interface
• TCP server (external agent)
• File server (external agent)

2.2 Testing

The testing has continued, and there are some results from it:

• The heap has stabilized
• The unit testing is done
• Integration testing is almost completed
• The system tests have been defined

There was also a meeting with the client and the supervisor, and the result was an agreement on the acceptance testing; the final demo application will be a major part of that.

3 Risk control

The last phase is strictly focused on the delivery of the product. This is emphasized by the use of weekly baselines. This implies that we have set weekly progress goals, and that each week there is a "delivery" produced, in order to determine the actual status of the product. During the last two weeks of the project, we expect to make these snapshots even more often. This gives us both visibility and control over the progress, so that reasonably sane decisions can be made in case of any difficulties arise.

4 Tasks to be done

Now that the functionality is in place, there are still many things to be done. The list that we have now is scheduled as follows:

• Finishing the manual
• Polishing the rest of the documentation
• System testing
• Test report updates
• Final demo applications
• Possible porting to other platforms (IRIX/HPUX/AIX) (optional)
• Creating a usable distribution (almost done already)

The final demo application will be a migration demonstration, which includes cross-platform migration (Intel-Alpha) and measurement concerning the migration and message passing within the system.

In addition to these, we have considered enhancing the compiler's code generation to achieve better performance. However, this is something optional, and it will only be done if there is enough spare time.