Summary
The goal of the construction phase is 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:
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Minimizing development costs by optimizing resources and avoiding unnecessary scrap and rework.
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Achieving adequate quality as rapidly as practical
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Achieving useful versions (alpha, beta, and other test releases) as rapidly as practical
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Completing the analysis, design, development and testing of all required functionality.
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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.
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To decide if the software, the sites, and the users are all ready for the application to be deployed.
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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.
The essential activities of the Construction phase include:
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Resource management, control and process optimization
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Complete component development and testing against the defined evaluation criteria
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Assessment of product releases against acceptance criteria for the vision.
Milestone
The Initial Operational Capability milestone determines whether the product is ready to be deployed into a beta-test
environment. See Milestone: Initial Operational Capability Milestone for details.
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