Goal Management – Goal partitioning for Inception phase

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Goal Management in iterative development process is a multi step process. Starting from partitioning the goals into phases and then from phases to iterations is a critical process.

Goal partitioning into phases:

The phases are Inception, Elaboration, Construction and Transition. Now how to partition the goals of the project into these phases? Let discuss it from phase to phase:

1. Goal partitioning for Inception phase

Inception is a phase in which the team basically identifies the requirement for the system. This is the phase in which the feasibility of the project comes up. It gives insight to the complexity of requirements and possible technical challenges. So which goals are to be partitioned into this phase? The primary objective of this phase are:

    * To describe the initial requirements
    * To develop and justify the business case for the system
    * To determine the scope of your system
    * To identify the people, organizations, and external systems that will interact with your system
    * To develop an initial risk assessment, schedule, and estimate for your system
    * To develop an initial tailoring of the Unified Process to meet your exact needs

The primary goal of the Inception phase is to set a firm foundation for your project. To accomplish this, we will need to:

    *  justify both the system itself and your approach to developing/obtaining the system,
    *  describe the initial requirements for your system,
    *  determine the scope of your system,
    *  identify the people, organizations, and external systems that will interact with your system,
    *  develop an initial risk assessment, schedule, and estimate for your system, and
    *  develop an initial tailoring of the Unified Process to meet your exact needs.

So if we look at this, this phase actually adds to the goal of the project itself. It basically provides input and a base for the rest of the phases. The artifacts that might come out of this phase are:

    *  A vision document
    *  An initial requirements model (10–20% complete)
    *  An initial project glossary
    *  A business case
    *  An initial domain model (optional)
    *  An initial business model (optional)
    *  A development case describing your project's tailored software process (optional)
    *  An architectural prototype (optional)

So if we try to partition our project goals to this phase, we shall have to take up those goals that are primarily for the achievement in business functionality. But we can not take out rest of them. So we hardly partition the goals in this phase. We on the other hand give concrete form to the project goals in this phase.

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