Construction Phase Goals

As with other RUP phases, there is a milestone that signals the end of the Construction phase. RUP calls this the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) milestone. We worked toward two primary goals to reach the milestone: stabilizing the product enough to send it to the user community, and ensuring that the user community was ready to accept the product.

Often a project team does an exemplary job of creating a stable, mature product. Just as often, a team ignores preparing the user community to work with the product. Even on a small project like PSP Tools, it is important to consider how to guide users toward success with the product. RUP helps us achieve both goals.

During the Construction phase it is possible to create many artifacts. Regardless of the size or formality of your project, there is one artifact that must always be produced: the "system," that is, the working software that embodies the features of the release. Typically at the end of the Construction phase you are ready to enter the Beta testing phase. ^[5] That is, you have implemented the software features, produced and tested them, and the stakeholders agree that the product is functionally complete for the release.

^[5] Some people mistakenly think that the software is ready for deployment to the entire end-user community at the end of the Construction phase. This is not the case. The final stages of creating a product and deploying it to users occur during the Transition phase.

Even after the Construction phase you will encounter some changes. Members of your Beta test community will provide feedback that uncovers problems and defects you never encountered during your testing. In the worst case, they will identify necessary features that are missing from the product. You mitigate this risk by ensuring customer and stakeholder involvement throughout the project and getting frequent feedback from them.