Summary

Developing a clear understanding of the business reasons for undertaking an application project and what the application will accomplish is the goal of the Envisioning process.

By creating a vision that documents a project's feasibility, goals, constraints, opportunities, and risks, the project team reaches the Vision Approved Milestone, which marks the end of the Envisioning Phase of the MSF Development Process Model. The Vision Document:

• Points all the team members in the same direction.
• Simplifies the decision-making process.
• Ensures consistent decisions.
• Motivates the team and reinforces the product goals.
• Directly impacts the quality of the product.
• Measures project performance and effectiveness.

In addition to generating a Vision Document as the primary deliverable for this milestone, the team can create prototypes that help ensure:

• Comprehension of important features by less-technical project stakeholders.
• Rapid visual understanding of the product's vision.

Knowing who is responsible for each critical portion of a project helps ensure that all project success factors are met. To meet this goal, the Project Structure Document identifies:

• The team leads for the six MSF Development Team Model roles.
• Expected staffing requirements for the six teams.

The team also begins the ongoing process of managing the project's risks to ensure success and documents these efforts in a Master Risk Assessment Document. The Master Risk Assessment Document:

• Identifies the highest risks for the product.
• Begins the project's risk management process.

The culmination of the Vision Approved Milestone is the cementing of the team's understanding of the vision, as well as that of the project's stakeholders.