Chapter 6 -- Project Plan

Chapter 6

About This Chapter

During a project's planning process, the team turns concepts and requirements into solid action plans, goals, and schedules. In this chapter, we outline the process of mapping concepts to actions and explain the roles of the team in the Planning Phase of the MSF Development Process Model. We take an in-depth look at the MSF Design Process Model and the conceptual, logical, and physical architectures of an application. We also discuss how the MSF Application Model's user, business, and data service layers can be incorporated into the application's physical architecture. We emphasize the MSF Development Process Model's Functional Specification, Master Project Plan, and Master Project Schedule as the key deliverables of this phase. Finally, we discuss principles of scheduling, as well as the ongoing task of risk management.

The principles and guidelines we provide in this chapter are based on our own experience with the creation of application architectures and the implementation of enterprise applications, together with the following sources:

• Microsoft Solutions Framework
• Walker Royce's Software Project Management: A Unified Framework
• Mary Kirtland's Designing Component-Based Applications

The majority of information in this chapter is from three MSF models: the MSF Development Process Model, the MSF Design Process Model, and the MSF Application Model for Development.

Upon completion, you will be able to:

• Describe the interim milestones and deliverables that lead to the Project Plan Approved Milestone.
• List and explain the purpose of various Planning Phase deliverables.
• Explain the roles that individual team members play during the Planning Phase.
• Understand the stages of application design.
• Analyze business requirements and their mappings to an application's design.
• Explain the importance of a Functional Specification.
• Explain the underlying principles of MSF scheduling practices.