Activity: Define Bill of Materials

The Bill of Materials serves as an inventory of the software and materials that are to be delivered as part of the overall product. The Bill of Materials lists the constituent parts of a given version of a product, and where the physical parts may be found. It describes the changes made in the version, and refers to how the product may be installed. 

The Bill of Materials should be updated for each build, and certainly for each iteration. The Deployment Manager needs to ensure that the following steps are followed.

List all Deliverable Items

The Deployment Manager needs to be sure that all contractually required items for product acceptance are listed, and accounted for. The Software Development Plan as a comprehensive, composite artifact that gathers all information required to manage the project is a good source of what will be required, and developed during the course of project.

The Deployment Manager should look to the Product Acceptance Plan for a description of how the customer will evaluate the deliverable artifacts to determine if they meet a predefined set of acceptance criteria. The Bill of Materials needs to account for all the items required for product acceptance.

On a tactical level, the Iteration Plan and the Integration Build Plan are a good source for determining what is to be developed for a given iteration. 

Maintain the Bill of Materials

All the items that go into a build need to be listed in the Bill of Materials. The Bill of Materials should be updated for each successive build and then baselined for review at the end of an iteration.

Rational Unified Process