Building a Small System

This route is to be used for in-house development of small, new systems, including client/server systems intended for use by one or two users, or a single, small department. Generally, a small project of this type would be expected to take less than three months to complete, and require fewer than five resources to complete it.

The Initiation Stage:
  1. Planning for Small Projects
    For small projects, the proposal and the Initiation Plan are developed in the same phase. In this phase, a business need is identified with the proposal that a solution be found, the scope is set, resources are planned, stakeholders are identified, and the context that the new system will operate in is determined.

The Analysis Stage:
  1. Rapid Analysis
    In this phase, we model the current system and the new system concurrently. As we identify the current business procedures and objects, we also look at where new ideas, features, and design changes should be introduced. The team creates Transaction Sequence Models and an Entity Object Model for only the new system.

    In the final steps of this phase, the team focuses on refining the Initiation Plan and converting it to a Project Plan. At this point deliverables are identified, resources are identified, and a schedule is produced for the entire project.

The Design Stage:
  1. Logical Design
    In this phase, the focus changes to design. The extended team may be changed to take advantage of specific design expertise. The team reviews the materials from earlier phases and begins the system design, identifying any additional system objects, determining operations and data structures for all objects, validating relationships and interactions between objects, and prototyping user interface objects.
  2. Physical Design
    In this phase, the team completes the technical blueprints for the new system, based on the implementation platform. If necessary, the team may be changed at this point to take advantage of specific platform expertise.

The Development Stage:
  1. Construction and QA
    In this phase, the system is actually built, fully tested in-house, corrections are made as required, and the User Acceptance Test system is built. The team may be changed again, to include specific implementation and testing skills, and must include at least one client from an earlier phase.
  2. User Acceptance Testing
    In this phase, the User Acceptance Test system is fully tested by the client department, corrections are made as required, and the Production system is built. The team may be changed to include specific expertise in the business area addressed by the system, to ensure that the system provides the required functionality.

The Installation & Deployment Stage:
  1. Implementation
    In this phase, the tested system is installed in the production area, documentation is delivered, initial user training is completed, and the application is turned over to the DMS Production Support team. When the system is running live, it is reviewed to ensure that we met all of the goals in the project plan for a satisfactory result. The project team may be regrouped again, to include specific expertise in installation and training.