At the end of the Inception Phase is the first major project milestone or Lifecycle Objectives
Milestone. At this point, you examine the lifecycle objectives of the project, and decide either to proceed
with the project or to cancel it.
Evaluation Criteria
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Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost/schedule estimates.
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Agreement that the right set of core requirements have been captured and that there is a shared understanding of
these requirements.
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Agreement that the cost and schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process are appropriate.
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All major risks have been identified, and a mitigation strategy exists for each.
The project may be aborted or considerably re-thought if it fails to reach this milestone.
Essential Artifacts (in order of importance)
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State at Milestone
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Vision
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The project's core requirements, key features, and main constraints are documented.
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Subsystem Vision
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These are the preliminary Vision artifacts for the subsystems tentatively identified in system
inception.
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Business Case
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Defined and approved.
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Risk List
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Initial project risks identified.
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Software Development Plan / System Development Plan
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Initial phases, their durations and objectives identified. Resource estimates (specifically the
time, staff, and development environment costs in particular) in the Software Development Plan/System Development Plan must be consistent with the Business
Case.
The System Development Plan is produced when the system scope includes more than software, and
a systems engineering approach is taken. Subordinate Software Development Plans are produced at
the end of the Inception Phases for software subsystem development.
The resource estimate may encompass either the entire project through delivery, or only an
estimate of resources needed to go through the Elaboration Phase. Estimates of the resources
required for the entire project should be viewed as very rough, a "guesstimate" at this point.
This estimate is updated in each phase and each iteration, and becomes more accurate with each
iteration.
Depending on the needs of the project, one or more of the enclosed "Plan" artifacts may be
conditionally completed. An initial Product Acceptance Plan should be reviewed
and baselined. The Product Acceptance plan is refined in subsequent iterations as additional
requirements are discovered.
In addition, the enclosed "Guidelines" artifacts are typically in at least a "draft" form.
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Iteration Plan
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Iteration plan for first Elaboration iteration completed and reviewed.
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Development Case
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Adaptations and extensions to the Rational Unified Process, documented and reviewed.
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Tools
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All tools to support the project are selected. The tools necessary for work in Elaboration are
installed.
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Glossary
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Important terms defined; glossary reviewed.
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Use-Case Model
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Important actors and use cases identified and flows of events outlined for only the most critical
use cases.
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Project Repository, Change Request
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The Configuration Management environment should be set up.
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Optional Artifacts
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State at Milestone
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Project Specific Templates
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The document templates used to develop the document artifacts.
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Prototypes, for example, System Architecture Proof-of-Concept
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One or more proof-of-concept prototypes, to support the Vision and Business Case, and to address
very specific risks.
For systems engineering, the system architecture work will assist in identifying the subsystems
and establishing a preliminary vision for them, so that the Inception phases for subsystem
development may begin.
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