Overview

We have known the fundamentals of the software process for years. One has only to read classic texts such as Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man Month (1995), originally published in the mid-1970s, to see that this is true. Unfortunately, as an industry, we have generally ignored these fundamentals in favor of flashy new technologies promising to do away with all our complexities, resulting in a consistent failure rate of roughly 85% on large-scale, mission-critical projects. Seven out of eight projects fail that is the cold, hard truth. Additionally, this failure rate, and embarrassments such as the Y2K crisis, are clear signs that we need to change our ways. It is time for organizations to choose to be successful, to follow techniques and approaches proven to work in practice, and to follow a mature software process.

A failure rate of roughly 85% implies a success rate of only 15%. Think about it.

The Inception phase is where you define the project scope and the business case the justification, for your system. In a nutshell, the goals of the Inception phase are to:

• describe the initial requirements for your system,

• determine the scope of your system,

• identify the people, organizations, and external systems that will interact with your system,

• develop an initial risk assessment, schedule, and estimate for your system,

• justify both the system itself and your approach to developing/obtaining it, and

• develop an initial tailoring of the Unified Process to meet your exact needs.

Your efforts during...