Major Milestones

The purpose of the RUP phases, therefore, is not to partition the activities by type: analysis, coding, and so on (this is what you achieve with the concept of disciplines). Rather, the purpose of a phase is to do just enough of any activity required to meet the objectives of this phase by the time you meet the milestone that concludes it. And what you need to achieve in each phase is mostly driven by risk. In other words, the phases define project states, whereas the states are in turn defined by the particular risks you are mitigating, or the questions you are answering.

  • In the Inception phase (see Figure 5.1),you will focus on handling the risks related to the business case: Is this project financially worthy? Is it feasible ?

    Figure 5.1. Major Milestones. The major milestones of the RUP are not expressed in terms of completing certain artifacts or documents, like many other methods , but mostly in terms of risk mitigation and completion of the product.

    graphics/05fig01.gif

  • In the Elaboration phase, you will focus mostly on the technical risks, examining the architectural risks, and maybe revisiting the scope again, as the requirements become better understood .

  • In the Construction phase, you will turn your attention to the " logistical " risks and get the mass of the work done; this is the phase where the project reaches its maximum staffing level.

  • In the Transition phase, you will handle the risks associated with the logistics of deploying the product to its user base.

These major milestones are key business-level decision points for the project, where major decisions must be made about the continuation of the project and its scope, funding, strategy, delivery, or schedule.

Also, since the phases are not associated with one kind of role, a RUP project is not executed in a pipeline fashion by having a crew of analysts throw requirements over the wall to a team of designers, who throw a design to a bunch of developers, who pass it to the poor testers to take all the blame. A RUP project is a collaboration among all these people, from business analysts to testers. All the RUP roles are involved throughout most of the cycle (except maybe the very early startup of a brand-new project).



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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