Advance Software Engineering

Inception Phase

The Inception Phase

The intent of inception is to establish some initial common vision for the objectives

of the project, determine if it is feasible, and decide if it is worth some serious investigation in elaboration

The overriding goal of the inception phase is to achieve concurrence among all stakeholders on the “lifecycle objectives” for the project

Milestone: Lifecycle Objective

• Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost and schedule estimates

• Requirements understanding as evidenced by the fidelity of the primary use cases

• Credibility of the cost and schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process

• Depth and breadth of any architectural prototype that was developed

• Actual expenditures versus planned expenditures

If the project fails to pass this milestone, it may be canceled or

considerably rethought.

The primary objectives of the inception phase include the following

• Establish the project's software scope and boundary conditions

• Discriminate the critical use cases of the system

• At least one candidate architecture against some of the primary scenarios

• Estimate the overall cost and schedule for the entire project and provide detailed estimates for the elaboration phase that will immediately follow

• Estimate risks (the sources of unpredictability).

The outcome of the inception phase is creation of these artifacts

• A vision document, that is, a general vision of the core project's requirements, key features, and main constraints

• The use-case model, which lists all use cases and actors that can be identified at this early stage

• An initial project glossary • An initial business case, which includes the following:

– Business context – Success criteria (revenue projection, market recognition,

and so on) – Financial forecast

• An initial risk assessment • A project plan, which shows the phases and iterations

Timing of UP Artifact Creation

Use Cases Within Inception

• Not all use cases are written in their fully dressed format during the inception phase.

Case Study: Use Cases in the NextGen Inception Phase

You Didn't Understand Inception When....