In addition to the various piecemeal scenarios that I have been working on for
the requirements document, I thought that it would be instructive to include at
least a couple of end to end scenarios in order to tie everything together. I
thought that I would do a couple that sort of represented opposite ends of the
spectrum -- a rather informal, open office environment with a few shared
printers, and a complex print something at a local print shop scenario. The
details of the proposed end to end scenarios follows. Before I spend a lot of
time, I'd like some feedback -- do you think that this would be helpful? Do
these scenarios represent some of what we think will be typical uses? I'd be
glad to take input, ideas, etc. before I start work. Please send your cards and
letters.
Scenario #1: An office worker prints on a shared, departmental printer. All
printers in the office are available for office printing, no authorization is
required to print, and no billing or accounting is done. Most printing is done
from standard desktop applications. A help desk is provided to help with print
problems. Standard desktop operating systems are used and drivers for the
printers are available from the support group. However, they are installed
manually by the support group on the client machine. Users generally are only
interested in finding machines close to their office and only worry about
printer features in very special cases. Most printing is "vanilla" office
printing.
Scenario #2: An executive in his hotel room is finishing an important
presentation on his laptop computer. He connects to a local print shop through
the web to get a copy of his charts printed for tomorrow's presentation. He
must find a shop that is convenient, can print color foils, and he wants to
find the lowest price. He must also temporarily install a driver in order to
generate the PDL required by the print shop. Mutual authentication is required
by the printshop and payment must be made in advance for the job. The job is
encrypted on the wire to prevent eavesdropping.