The goal of the construction phase is clarifying the remaining requirements and completing the development of the system based upon the baselined architecture. The construction phase is in some sense a manufacturing process, where emphasis is placed on managing resources and controlling operations to optimize costs, schedules, and quality. In this sense the management mindset undergoes a transition from the development of intellectual property during inception and elaboration, to the development of deployable products during construction and transition.
 

Topics

Any Role Developers Prepare Environment for Iteration Deployment Manager Development Process - Ready for Iteration Development Infrastructure Tools - Ready for Iteration System Analyst Technical Writer Testers Manage Iteration Test and Evaluate Product Deployment Units Monitor and Control Project Plan Iteration - Next Iteration Manage Change Requests Product Build - Completed Building End User Support Material - Draft Develop Support Material Iteration assessment Iteration Assessment - Current Iteration Iteration Plan Iteration Plan Iteration Plan - Next Iteration Risks - Updated Build - Build Ready for Testing Test Evaluation Summary Manage Changing Requirements Develop Components Change Requests Change Requests Project Manager Process Engineer Support Environment

Workflow details typically performed in an iteration in Construction for medium sized projects.

Objectives To top of page

The primary objectives of the Construction phase include:

  • Minimizing development costs by optimizing resources and avoiding unnecessary scrap and rework.
  • Achieving adequate quality as rapidly as practical
  • Achieving useful versions (alpha, beta, and other test releases) as rapidly as practical
  • Completing the analysis, design, development and testing of all required functionality.
  • To iteratively and incrementally develop a complete product that is ready to transition to its user community. This implies describing the remaining use cases and other requirements, fleshing out the design, completing the implementation, and testing the software.
  • To decide if the software, the sites, and the users are all ready for the application to be deployed.
  • To achieve some degree of parallelism in the work of development teams.  Even on smaller projects, there are typically components that can be developed independently of one another, allowing for natural parallelism between teams (resources permitting). This parallelism can accelerate the development activities significantly; but it also increases the complexity of resource management and workflow synchronization. A robust architecture is essential if any significant parallelism is to be achieved.

Essential Activities To top of page

The essential activities of the Construction phase include:

  • Resource management, control and process optimization
  • Complete component development and testing against the defined evaluation criteria
  • Assessment of product releases against acceptance criteria for the vision.

Milestone To top of page

The Initial Operational Capability milestone determines whether the product is ready to be deployed into a beta-test environment. See Milestone: Initial Operational Capability for details.

Tailoring Decisions To top of page

The example iteration workflow shown at the top of this page represents a typical Construction iteration in medium sized projects. The Sample Iteration Plan: Construction Phase represents a different perspective of the breakdown of activities to undertake in an Construction iteration. This iteration plan is more complete in terms of workflow details and activities, and as such, more suitable for larger projects. Small projects might decide to do only a subset of these workflow details, deviations should be challenged and documented as part of the project-specific process. When planning an iteration in Construction, keep in mind that the project's focus may shift from beginning of the phase to the end, and the iteration workflows may differ slightly from one iteration to the other. For example - in the Construction phase - a project will focus more on development of installation artifacts in late iterations.

 


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