The goal of the construction phase is on 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.
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
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: Initial Operational Capability
The Initial Operational Capability milestone determines whether the product
is ready to be deployed into a beta-test environment. (See Milestone: Initial Operation Capability for more information).
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