Four phases to deliver value in Agile projects
Concept phase: it is where we outline the objectives, the results and the justification of the initiative.
Inception phase – where we identify the foundation of the solution, build an initial prioritized backlog, and a good enough initial release plan.
Delivery phase: which involves the creation of functionality from the requirements through design, analysis, testing, construction and implementation. The delivery cycle is repeated until the project is finished.
Closing Phase: Where we take the lessons learned in this initiative and amplify them throughout the organization, delivering the business benefits and relieving people so they can join other projects.
Learning and adapting is not listed as a phase, as it should be an activity that is continuous in nature.
Why the need for a concept phase?
Scrum focuses on the delivery of (software) projects. Naturally, it does not take into account the phases prior to the point where we start developing the requirements. In this article, we briefly discuss the phases that prepare value and delivery teams to build and deliver software.
phase concept
The entry to the concept phase deals with a new idea or need for change. Start a journey of discovery of what the idea or potential product can do for our business. The discoveries here are translated into the desired results. These are typically our acceptance criteria for the project.
Project stakeholders
The concept phase is our opportunity to identify all stakeholders who may be affected by the initiative. It is crucial for our team, as well as for the success of the product, to ensure that we understand where in the matrix of influence and power of stakeholders our identified individuals reside. We are also committed to understanding the objectives of the various stakeholders so that we can manage their expectations and ensure that we do everything possible to meet their objectives.
During conceptualization we begin with activities that bring related ideas to light. Make them tangible to create fertile ground for collaboration. Here, a high-level capability map works like magic, as we can map high-level feature sets to locate associated functionality in high-level competencies. Once we understand the limits of the system we are envisioning, we can start with invention activities which may include brainstorming for the product, looking at what competitors are doing in this space and trying to apply any improvements, etc.
invention activities
The invention activities, along with the capability map, allow us to create a high-level design of the system we are envisioning. These should include a healthy mix of low-fidelity paper prototypes (initial UI model) that we can test with real-world users before embarking on the next phases of the process. We can also imagine the architecture required at this time that will guide various aspects in the future. The topic of agile modeling techniques is beyond the scope of this article.
Once we have our high-level requirements, we comprise a model that represents the intended use for the system, an initial domain model that identifies the fundamental business entity types and the relationship between them, and an initial user interface model. which explores user interface and usability issues. The goal here is to build a shared understanding and not to write detailed documentation. Your success in this phase is using inclusive modeling techniques that encourage stakeholder participation.
Success Criteria for the Concept Phase
The acceptance criteria (outcomes) of the concept phase are a project charter or starting platform, a list of quality objectives, and a set of high-level capabilities. These are fed directly into the startup phase as inputs.
