Chapter 6. The Inception Phase

In this chapter, we'll provide a basic understanding of what Inception, the first phase of the RUP lifecycle, is all about. Many newcomers to the RUP approach get lost in the rich set of activities and guidelines that it provides and often lose perspective on what they are trying to achieve. The RUP approach is actually quite simple: Make sure you have a clear picture of the objectives for each of the four phases (see Figure 6.1 ) and imagine what these concrete objectives mean for your situation. Understanding what you want to achieve in a phase will help you apply the RUP approach to your projects more effectively; you will select and perform only those activities that will contribute to achieving the objectives of a particular project.

Figure 6.1. The Inception Phase. Inception is the first phase of the RUP lifecycle; it has a well-defined set of objectives and is concluded by the Lifecycle Objective Milestone. Use these objectives to help you decide which activities to carry out and which artifacts to produce.

graphics/06fig01.gif

As you read this chapter, it is important to remember what we discussed in Chapter 3 about low-ceremony and high-ceremony developments. We describe here an approach to software development that should help you develop better software, and we describe what types of artifacts you need to produce. As you apply these guidelines to your project, you need to decide how formally you want to capture artifacts: This could be done in your head, on a whiteboard, or in a model or document. How formally do you want to review these artifacts? We will try to point out obvious shortcuts you can make if you work in small projects or low-ceremony projects, but in the end, nothing can replace common sense, and you will need to make a judgment call as to what fits your project best. Also remember what we discussed in the previous chapter regarding RUP not having fixed workflows and avoiding frozen artifacts.



The Rational Unified Process Made Easy(c) A Practitioner's Guide to Rational Unified Process
Programming Microsoft Visual C++
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 173

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