The Photo Editor Application

Unified Process: Elaboration Phase and Third Iteration

This chapter discusses the third iteration of the project, which corresponds to the elaboration phase of the Unified Process. In this phase the goals to be achieved are to provide an architectural baseline and to formulate a project agreement with the customer to further pursue the project.

The architectural baseline implements a working application with limited functionality. The implemented features in our example include exception handling, loading and saving images, and basic image operations. The project agreement that is signed at the end of this phase should include the time frame, equipment, staff, and cost. This leads to the goals that are set for this iteration:

• The vision and business case are updated.
• The requirements are refined and analyzed.
• The risk assessment is updated.
• A detailed project plan is developed.
• The executable program, implementing the architectural framework with UML documentation, is developed.
• The project agreement is signed by the stakeholders to continue the project.

Most of the milestones are based on the work products that were started in the inception phase. Based on those work products, the work breakdown into the five core workflows is as follows:

• Requirements: Refine the requirements and system scope.
• Analysis: Analyze the requirements by describing what the system does.
• Design: Develop a stable architecture using UML.
• Implementation: Implement the architectural baseline.
• Test: Test the implemented architectural baseline.

In the elaboration phase the main focus lies on the requirements and analysis workflows. But as explained in Chapter 2, all five core workflows are to be worked on in all phases. This means that in this iteration we spend a considerable amount of time in the design, implementation, and test workflows as well.