4.1. What is Inception?
Most projects require a short initial step in which the following kinds of questions are explored:
- What is the vision and business case for this project?
- Feasible?
- Buy and/or build?
- Rough unreliable range of cost: Is it $10K100K or in the millions?
- Should we proceed or stop?
Defining the vision and obtaining an order-of-magnitude (unreliable) estimate requires doing some requirements exploration. However, the purpose of the inception phase is not to define all the requirements , or generate a believable estimate or project plan.
Definition This is a critical point, and repeatedly misunderstood on UP projects when people superimpose old "waterfall" thinking. The UP is not the waterfall, and the first phase, inception, is not the time do all requirements or create believable estimates or plans. That happens during elaboration. |
Inception in one sentence:Envision the product scope, vision, and business case. The main problem solved in one sentence:Do the stakeholders have basic agreement on the vision of the project, and is it worth investing in serious investigation? |
Does this Analogy Help?
In the oil business, when a new field is being considered, some of the steps include:
1. | Decide if there is enough evidence or a business case to even justify exploratory drilling. |
2. | If so, do measurements and exploratory drilling. |
3. | Provide scope and estimate information. |
4. | Further steps… |
The inception phase is like step one in this analogy. In step one people do not predict how much oil there is, or how much cost or effort is needed to extract it. Although it would be nice to be able to answer "how much" and "when" questions without the cost and effort of the exploration, in the oil business it is understood to not be realistic.In UP terms, the realistic exploration step is the elaboration phase. The preceding inception phase is akin to a feasibility study to decide if it is even worth investing in exploratory drilling. Only after serious exploration (elaboration) do we have the data and insight to make somewhat believable estimates and plans. Therefore, in iterative development and the UP, plans and estimates are not to be considered reliable in the inception phase. They merely provide an order-of-magnitude sense of the level of effort, to aid the decision to continue or not.