Capability Pattern: Analysis & Design
This capability pattern covers the activities and workflow for the Analysis and Design discipline.
DescriptionWork Breakdown StructureTeam AllocationWork Product Usage
Relationships
Description

In the Inception Phase, analysis and design is concerned with establishing whether the system as envisioned is feasible, and with assessing potential technologies for the solution (in Activity: Perform Architectural Synthesis). If it is felt that little risk attaches to the development (because, for example, the domain is well understood, the system is not novel, and so on) then this activity may be omitted.

The early Elaboration Phase focuses on creating an initial architecture for the system ( Activity: Define a Candidate Architecture) to provide a starting point for the main analysis work. If the architecture already exists (either because it was produced in previous iterations, in previous projects, or is obtained from an application framework), the focus of the work changes to refining the architecture (Activity: Refine the Architecture. An initial set of elements is created which provide the appropriate behavior ( Activity: Analyze Behavior).

After the initial elements are identified, they are further refined. Activity: Design Components produce a set of components which provide the appropriate behavior to satisfy the requirements on the system. If the system includes a database, then Activity: Design the Database occurs in parallel. The result is an initial set of components which are further refined in Capability Pattern: Implementation

 

Properties
Event-Driven
Multiple Occurrences
Ongoing
Optional
Planned
Repeatable
Usage
Usage Notes

Decide How to Perform the Workflow

The following decisions should be made regarding the Analysis & Design discipline's workflow:

  • Decide how to perform the workflow by looking at the activities in this workflow. Study the diagram with its guard conditions, and the guidelines. Decide which activities to perform and in which order. 
  • Decide what parts of the Analysis & Design activities to perform. The following parts can be introduced relatively independently from the rest.

Part of workflow

Comments

User interface design Some projects decide to not design the user interface. One reason could be that the user interface is easy to develop. If you decide to not do user-interface design it means that you do not develop a Navigation Map and a User-Interface Prototype. 
Database design Only used if the entities are going to be stored in a database. If you decide against doing database design, it means that you do not develop any Data Model. 
Real time, using Rational Rose RealTime If you decide to not do this, it means that you do not develop artifacts such as Capsule and Protocol.

  • Decide when, during the project lifecycle, to introduce each part of the workflow. It is sometimes possible to wait until the Elaboration phase before introducing the Analysis & Design discipline. For example, if the development is in a well-understood domain, does not have demanding performance (or other non-functional) requirements, and will be based on a well-tried architecture, there is little need for prototyping during inception.
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