Descriptions of the Team Roles

Project Leader

The project leader is responsible for the overall project. This role includes:

ensuring that all milestones are achieved successfully and on time
ensuring that all parts of the project are integrated successfully
chairing the team meetings
helping the other team members to fulfil their responsibilities

The project leader is not a "boss", i.e. he/she may not give orders. The team is required to elect to project leader at the beginning of the project; this implies that they are prepared to accept his/her planning in ensuring that the project is completed successfully.

Conceptual Model

This role is responsible for the team's conceptual model (CM). The CM should be built as a stochastic Petri net. This role includes:

Designing and drawing the Petri net
Stating what assumptions/simplifications were made
Updating the model if it is changed later in the project
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestone 3

Note that this does not imply that the team member with this role has to create the CM alone. He/she is responsible for this being achieved by the entire team.

Data Acquisition

The team member with this role is responsible for:

deciding what data is to be collected
deciding how the data is to be collected
organising the collection of the field data
converting the raw data into a suitable form for the simulation program
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestone 4

Note that this does not imply that the team member with this role has to realize the data collection alone. He/she is responsible for this being achieved by the entire team.

Chief Software Architect

The Chief Software Architect (CSA) is responsible for the simulation program produced by his/her team. This includes:

organising and planning the program
making sure the program is written and submitted punctually
the correctness of the simulation program
the documentation of the simulation program
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestone #5

Note that the CSA does not necessarily have to be the person who does all or most of the programming.

Validation and Quality Control

This role is responsible for validating the model, i.e. ensuring that the simulation results accurately represent the behaviour of the real system. This includes:

choosing variables to be used as comparison criteria
comparing simulation results to the real system
reporting on the validity of the model
pointing out any inaccuracies or limitations in the model
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestone #6

Experimental Design

This role is responsible for designing, conducting and analyzing the experiments to generate the necessary results.
This includes:

defining state variables to be measured
designing the simulation experiments
performing the simulation experiments
writing the approriate experiment scripts
defining appropriate measurement points in the model
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestone #7

Note that ED does not actually have to perform all the experiments.

alternatively: Validation, Quality Control and Experimental Design (in 5-person teams)

This role is responsible for validating the model, i.e. ensuring that the simulation results accurately represent the behaviour of the real system and designing experiments to gather the needed results.

defining state variables to be measured at appropriate points in the model
comparing simulation results to the real system
pointing out any inaccuracies or limitations in the model
designing and performing the simulation experiments
writing the approriate experiment scripts
making the principal contribution to the report and presentation of milestones #6 and #7