Concept: Lifecycle Objectives Milestone
This guideline discusses the evaluation criteria for the Lifecycle Objectives Milestone at the end of the inception phase. The state of the essential artifacts is also described.
Main Description

At the end of the inception phase is the first major project milestone or Lifecycle Objectives Milestone. At this point, you examine the lifecycle objectives of the project, and decide either to proceed with the project or to cancel it.

Evaluation Criteria

  • Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost/schedule estimates
  • Agreement that the right set of requirements have been captured and that there is a shared understanding of these requirements.
  • Agreement that the cost/schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process are appropriate.
  • All risks have been identified and a mitigation strategy exists for each.

The project may be aborted or considerably re-thought if it fails to reach this milestone.

Artifacts

Essential Artifacts (in order of importance) State at milestone
Vision The project's core requirements, key features, and main constraints are documented.
Business case Defined and approved.
Risk list Initial project risks identified.
Project plan  Initial phases, their durations and objectives identified. Resource estimates (specifically the time, staff, and development environment costs in particular) in the project plan must be consistent with the business case.

The resource estimate may encompass either the entire project through delivery, or only an estimate of resources needed to go through the elaboration phase. Estimates of the resources required for the entire project should be viewed as very rough, a "guesstimate" at this point. This estimate is updated in each phase and each iteration, and becomes more accurate with each iteration. 

Depending on the needs of the project, one or more additional plan artifacts may be conditionally completed. An initial Product Acceptance Plan is often reviewed and baselined. The Product Acceptance plan is refined in subsequent iterations as additional requirements are discovered.

Iteration plan Iteration plan for first Elaboration iteration completed and reviewed.
Project process Adaptations and extensions to the project's process, documented and reviewed. This typically includes project specific guidelines and templates, as well as documentation of project-specific tailoring decisions.
Development infrastructure

All tools to support the project are selected. The tools necessary for work in Inception are installed.

In particular, the Configuration Management environment should be set up.

Glossary Important terms defined; glossary reviewed.
Requirements  Important scenarios, captured as use cases or user stories, have been identified, with flows of events outlined for only the most critical scenarios.

Optional Artifacts

State at milestone

Domain model The key concepts being used in the system, documented and reviewed. 
Prototypes One or more proof of concept prototypes, to support the vision and business case, and to address very specific risks.