An agile, scalable way to control, plan and track
Use this practice to establish control over the lifecycle of an iterative development project.
This practice allows teams to:
- Establish a life-cycle for the project and plan effectively according to project circumstances
- Share a set of common milestones with other projects and teams
- Identify short-term objectives to reduce the levels of risk they face
- Structure the plans into a sequence of well understood phases
- Take full advantage of the benefits of iterative development
- Add this new practice to your existing way of working
- Focus on the essential things which need to be done
- Ensure your development efforts stay on track
Life-cycle Planning Patterns
This practice contains a set of effective lifecycle planning patterns that help the team to:
- Understand where the project is, and how well they are doing in addressing the risks
- Adopt a standard control framework and establish appropriate objectives and milestones
- Plan and iterate in a controlled manner
- Balance the evolution of architecture and requirements alongside the development of a high quality software solution
The Common Milestones
This pattern defines a set of milestones, or way points, suitable for the planning and tracking of all styles of iterative and incremental software development projects. The pattern describes these three milestones for each product release cycle as follows:
- Life-cycle Objectives (LCO) – key scoping decisions are made about the product release - operational requirements of the software are agreed
- Life-cycle Architecture (LCA) – the software architecture is established and major associated risks are resolved
- Initial Operational Capability (IOC) – the software is fully functional and preparations are made for transitioning the software to the customer and/or the live operating environment
The Life-cycle Phases
The practice refines the Common Milestones pattern by defining four project phases to progress a project successfully through the three common milestones. The project or product release cycle is divided into four sequential phases, each with well defined objectives:
- Inception - confirm the scope and objectives and bring the business risks under control
- Elaboration - stabilize the plans and bring the architectural and technical risks under control
- Construction - build the product and bring the logistical, project execution risks under control
- Transition - deliver the product and bring the roll-out risks under control.
Related content
