What are the four phases of the Unified Process ?

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What are the four phases of the Unified Process ?..

Answer / l. baher

Four Process Phases

The Unified Process consists of cycles that may repeat over
the long-term life of a system. A cycle consists of four
phases: Inception, Elaboration, Construction and Transition.
Each cycle is concluded with a release, there are also
releases within a cycle. Let's briefly review the four
phases in a cycle:

* Inception Phase - During the inception phase the core
idea is developed into a product vision. In this phase, we
review and confirm our understanding of the core business
drivers. We want to understand the business case for why the
project should be attempted. The inception phase establishes
the product feasibility and delimits the project scope.
* Elaboration Phase - During the elaboration phase the
majority of the Use Cases are specified in detail and the
system architecture is designed. This phase focuses on the
"Do-Ability" of the project. We identify significant risks
and prepare a schedule, staff and cost profile for the
entire project.
* Construction Phase - During the construction phase the
product is moved from the architectural baseline to a system
complete enough to transition to the user community. The
architectural baseline grows to become the completed system
as the design is refined into code.
* Transition Phase - In the transition phase the goal is
to ensure that the requirements have been met to the
satisfaction of the stakeholders. This phase is often
initiated with a beta release of the application. Other
activities include site preparation, manual completion, and
defect identification and correction. The transition phase
ends with a postmortem devoted to learning and recording
lessons for future cycles.

Is This Answer Correct ?

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What are the four phases of the Unified Process ?..

Answer / rohit

The life of a software system can be represented as a series
of cycles. A cycle ends with the release of a version of the
system to customers.

Within the Unified Process, each cycle contains four phases.
A phase is simply the span of time between two major
milestones, points at which managers make important
decisions about whether to proceed with development and, if
so, what's required concerning project scope, budget, and
schedule.

Figure 1-1: Phases and Major Milestones

Figure 1-1 shows the phases and major milestones of the
Unified Process. In it, you can see that each phase contains
one or more iterations. We'll explore the concept of
iterations in the section "Iterations and Increments" later
in this chapter.

The following subsections describe the key aspects of each
of these phases.
Inception

The primary goal of the Inception phase is to establish the
case for the viability of the proposed system.

The tasks that a project team performs during Inception
include the following:

*

Defining the scope of the system (that is, what's in
and what's out)
*

Outlining a candidate architecture, which is made up
of initial versions of six different models
*

Identifying critical risks and determining when and
how the project will address them
*

Starting to make the business case that the project is
worth doing, based on initial estimates of cost, effort,
schedule, and product quality

The concept of candidate architecture is discussed in the
section "Architecture-Centric" later in this chapter. The
six models are covered in the next major section of this
chapter, "The Five Workflows."

The major milestone associated with the Inception phase is
called Life-Cycle Objectives. The indications that the
project has reached this milestone include the following:

*

The major stakeholders agree on the scope of the
proposed system.
*

The candidate architecture clearly addresses a set of
critical high-level requirements.
*

The business case for the project is strong enough to
justify a green light for continued development.

Chapter 7 describes the details of the Inception phase.
Elaboration

The primary goal of the Elaboration phase is to establish
the ability to build the new system given the financial
constraints, schedule constraints, and other kinds of
constraints that the development project faces.

The tasks that a project team performs during Elaboration
include the following:

*

Capturing a healthy majority of the remaining
functional requirements
*

Expanding the candidate architecture into a full
architectural baseline, which is an internal release of the
system focused on describing the architecture
*

Addressing significant risks on an ongoing basis
*

Finalizing the business case for the project and
preparing a project plan that contains sufficient detail to
guide the next phase of the project (Construction)

The architectural baseline contains expanded versions of the
six models initialized during the Inception phase.

The major milestone associated with the Elaboration phase is
called Life-Cycle Architecture. The indications that the
project has reached this milestone include the following:

*

Most of the functional requirements for the new system
have been captured in the use case model.
*

The architectural baseline is a small, skinny system
that will serve as a solid foundation for ongoing development.
*

The business case has received a green light, and the
project team has an initial project plan that describes how
the Construction phase will proceed.

The use case model is described in the upcoming section "The
Five Workflows." Risks are discussed in the section
"Iterations and Increments" later in this chapter.

Chapter 8 describes the details of the Elaboration phase.
Construction

The primary goal of the Construction phase is to build a
system capable of operating successfully in beta customer
environments.

During Construction, the project team performs tasks that
involve building the system iteratively and incrementally
(see "Iterations and Increments" later in this chapter),
making sure that the viability of the system is always
evident in executable form.

The major milestone associated with the Construction phase
is called Initial Operational Capability. The project has
reached this milestone if a set of beta customers has a more
or less fully operational system in their hands.

Chapter 9 describes the details of the Construction phase.
Transition

The primary goal of the Transition phase is to roll out the
fully functional system to customers.

During Transition, the project team focuses on correcting
defects and modifying the system to correct previously
unidentified problems.

The major milestone associated with the Transition phase is
called Product Release.

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