Inception Phase

Inception Phase

       This is the part of the project where the original idea is developed. The amount of work done here is dependent on how formal project planning is done in your organization and the size of the project. During this part of the project some technical risk may be partially evaluated and/or eliminated. This may be done by using a few throw away prototypes to test for technical feasability of specific system functions. Normally this phase would take between two to six weeks for large projects and may be only a few days for smaller projects. The following should be done during this phase:

1.       Project idea is developed.

2.       Assess the capablilities of any current system that provides similar functionality to the new project even if the current system is a manual system. This will help determine cost savings that the new system can provide.

3.       Utilize as many users and potential users as possible along with technical staff, customers, and management to determine desired system features, functional capabilities, and performance requirements. Analyze the scope of the proposed system.

4.       Identify feature and functional priorities along with preliminary risk assessment of each system feature or function.

5.       Identify systems and people the system will interact with.

6.       For large systems, break the system down into subsystems if possible.

7.       Identify all major use cases and describe significant use cases. No need to make expanded use cases at this time. This is just to help identify and present system functionality.

8.       Develop a throw away prototype of the system with breadth and not depth. This prototype will address some of the greatest technical risks. The time to develop this prototype should be specifically limited. For a project that will take about one year, the prototype should take one month.

9.       Present a business case for the project (white paper) identifying rough cost and value of the project. The white paper is optional for smaller projects. Define goals, estimate risks, and resources required to complete the project.

10.     Set up some major project milestones (mainly for the elaboration phase). A rough estimate of the overall project size is made.

11.     Preliminary determination of iterations and requirements for each iteration. This outlines system functions and features to be included in each iteration. Keep in mind that this plan will likely be changes as risks are further assessed and more requirements are determined.

12.     Management Approval for a more serious evaluation of the project.

13.     This phase is done once the business case is presented with major milestones determined (not cast in stone yet) and management approves the plan. At this point the following should be complete:

-        Business case (if required) with risk assessment.

-        Preliminary project plan with preliminary iterations planned.

-        Core project requirements are defined on paper

- Major use cases are defined.

       The inception phase has only one iteration. All other phases may have multiple iterations.

       The overriding goal of the inception phase is to achieve concurrence among all stakeholders on the lifecycle objectives for the project. The inception phase is of significance primarily for new development efforts, in which there are significant business and requirements risks which must be addressed before the project can proceed. For projects focused on enhancements to an existing system, the inception phase is more brief, but is still focused on ensuring that the project is both worth doing and possible to do.

Objectives

       The primary objectives of the Inception phase include:

       Establishing the project's software scope and boundary conditions, including an operational vision, acceptance criteria and what is intended to be in the product and what is not.

       Discriminating the critical use cases of the system, the primary scenarios of operation that will drive the major design tradeoffs.

       Exhibiting, and maybe demonstrating, at least one candidate architecture against some of the primary scenarios

       Estimating the overall cost and schedule for the entire project (and more detailed estimates for the elaboration phase that will immediately follow)

       Estimating potential risks (the sources of unpredictability)

       Preparing the supporting environment for the project.

Essential Activities

The essential activities of the Inception include:

1.  Formulating the scope of the project.

This involves capturing the context and the most important requirements and constraintsto such an extent that you can derive acceptance criteria for the end product.

2.  Planning and preparing a business case.

       Evaluating alternatives for risk management, staffing, project plan, and cost/schedule/profitability tradeoffs

3.  Synthesizing a candidate architecture

       Evaluating tradeoffs in design, and in make/buy/reuse, so that cost, schedule and resources can be estimated. The aim here is to demonstrate feasibility through some kind of proof of concept. This may take the form of a model which simulates what is required, or an initial prototype which explores what are considered to be the areas of high risk. The prototyping effort during inception should be limited to gaining confidence that a solution is possible - the solution is realized during elaboration and construction.

4.  Preparing the environment for the project

       Assessing the project and the organization, selecting tools, deciding which parts of the process to improve.

Milestone

The Lifecycle Objectives Milestone evaluates the basic viability of the project.

Tailoring Decisions

       The example iteration workflow shown at the top of this page represents a typical Inception iteration in medium sized projects. The Sample Iteration Plan for Inception represents a different perspective of the breakdown of activities to undertake in an Inception iteration. This iteration plan is more complete in terms of workflow details and activities, and as such, more suitable for large projects. Small projects might decide to do only a subset of these workflow details, deviations should be challenged and documented as part of the project-specific process.

Inception Phase includes:

       Refining the scope of the project

       Project planning

       Risk identification and analysis

       Preparing the project environment

       Estimating the Budget