InRoads for CAiCE Users
"InRoads for CAiCE Users" - What do you get
when you force an InRoads Guru and training specialist to use CAiCE at Caltrans for eighteen months? Well,
mostly, a steady stream of cries of pain and profanity, but additionally:
- an understanding of the CAiCE "mindset"
- an understanding of internal and external procedures, policies, and
deliverables
- an understanding of what CAiCE does well
- an understanding of the issues CAiCE users will face when they start
learning InRoads
- an understanding of what CAiCE users will embrace when they start
- an understanding of how to enable CAiCE users to "get their minds
around" the differences in the InRoads mindset
- an understanding of how to help CAiCE users recognize how InRoads will
simplify their data management, collaboration, and workflows
Upon completion of my Building InRoads
update, I will revise the narrative to reflect the habits and concerns of CAiCE
users. I will develop some labs specifically to facilitate the shift in
mindset between CAiCE and InRoads.
I'm hoping to have this done by mid-February.
In the meantime, let me set your expectations in moving to InRoads:
There will be a learning curve associated with moving to InRoads.
InRoads is a broad and complicated program, but the complexity is a result of
its breadth of capabilities, not bad software and data management
design. Most of your effort when working in InRoads is engineering; the
developers of the software have done a really good job in minimizing data
management efforts and streamlining engineering workflow. The processes
that should be automatic and "under the hood" are. It's a really
good product.
One thing that prevented early revolt from CAiCE (at CalTrans, anyway) was
the custom code written specifically for CalTrans (fragment libraries, for
example); similar tailored functionality will be written for CalTrans and will
be easier to customize.
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