Software Engineering PS (WS2000/2001)

© Copyright 2000, Schwaiger Roland

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Inception Phase

During Inception Phase, you establish the business case for the system and delimit the project scope. To accomplish this one must find all external entities with which the system will interact (actors) and define the the nature of interaction at a high level. This involves identifying all use cases and describing a few significant ones (primary use cases). The business case includes success criteria, risk assessment, and estimate of the ressources needed, and a phase plan showing dates of major milestones.

The outcome of the inception phase is:

• A vision document, general vision of the core project's requirements, key features, and main constraints.
• An initial use-case model (10%-20% complete).
• An initial project glossary.
• An initial business case, which includes business context, success criteria (revenue projection, market recognition, ...), and financial forecast.
• An initial risk assessment.
• A project plan, showing phases and itrations.
• A business model, if necessary.
• One or several prototypes.

At the end of the inception phase is the first major project milestone: the Lifecycle Objectives Milestone. The evaluation criteria for the inception phase are:

• Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost/schedule estimates.
• Requirements understanding as evidenced by the fidelity of the primary use cases.
• Credibility of the cost/schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process.
• Depth and breadth of any architectural prototype that was developed.
• Actual expenditures vesus planned expenditures.