Assessing the Elaboration Phase

At the beginning of this chapter, we stated the Elaboration phase's goals. How did we do, and were we through with the Elaboration phase? We didn't complete everything we identified in the Elaboration iteration plan.

We spent little time updating the overall project plan. Gary pulled together an initial software architecture document. Liz drafted a support and documentation plan. Most of the documents were not used as we progressed. The reason is simple: We talked to each other regularly and kept brief lists of what we needed or were doing on Groove. And this was (yes, you guessed it) good enough for this project.

What about the LCA (Lifecycle Architecture) milestone ”did we get there? Yes we did. At the end of the iteration, we were able to present Russell with an executable architecture. More importantly, we were able to use it as the basis for upcoming iterations, and we could talk in terms of what we had produced. We reduced the risk of working with a database. It really wasn't that hard. Our requirements changed somewhat during the Elaboration phase, mainly because we scoped out some of the things we hoped to deliver for the initial release. But the requirements had stabilized enough so that we understood what work we needed to complete to finish the project.

We wrote a short iteration plan for the first iteration in the Construction phase. This was the last plan we wrote down. (There will be more to say about this in Chapter 8.) We declared victory and began our march through the Construction phase.

Reviewing the Executable Architecture

During our Elaboration phase assessment, we wanted to review the executable architecture at one of our regular team meetings before showing it to Russell. We wanted to look at the software and step through the use cases and scenarios together. There are several communication tools that allow you to share views of working software, such as Microsoft NetMeeting and WebEx software. However, some of us were working with slow connections; using group communication software with such connections can be painful.

We found a solution to our problem with a software tool that allowed us to record a session with the executable architecture and share that session with the team. We used the Viewlet technology from Qarbon, Inc. ^[14]

^[14] See www.qarbon.com for information on the Viewlet technology.

Gary recorded a Viewlet of using the PSP Tools software, stepping through each of the expected scenarios. He added comments to the Viewlet that helped the team understand what was included and excluded from the software at that point. After he compiled the Viewlet, he placed it on Groove and the team used that to explore the software together. Figure 6.12 shows a snapshot from the Elaboration phase review Viewlet.

Figure 6.12. Snapshot from the Elaboration phase review Viewlet

Viewlets are a great way to demonstrate your work, or to document and train people on your software. We included the Elaboration phrase review Viewlet on the Web site for the book.