ALIGNING OF DELIVERY CADENCE, DEVELOPMENT APPROACH, AND LIFE CYCLE

The community center examples described in Section 2.3.3 will be revisited to demonstrate how the delivery cadence, development approach, and life cycle fit together. In this example, there are four products and services: the building, the community action patrol (CAP) training, the senior services, and the website. Table 2-4 describes the delivery cadence and the development approach.

Table 2-4. Delivery Cadence and Development Approach

Based on this information, a potential life cycle might be:

• Start Up. Entry criteria for this phase are that the business case has been approved and the project charter has been authorized. In this phase, the high-level roadmap is developed, initial funding requirements are established, project team and resource requirements are defined, a milestone schedule is created, and planning for a procurement strategy is defined. These deliverables should be complete prior to exiting the start-up phase. Exit criteria will be reviewed at an origination phase gate review.
• Plan. In this phase, the high-level information for the building is decomposed into detailed plans. A detailed design document for the CAP training is completed. An analysis of the senior services offering is completed along with a gap analysis. The initial wireframe for the website is created. These deliverables should be complete prior to exiting the planning phase. Exit criteria will be reviewed at a planning phase gate review.
• Development. This phase will overlap with the test and deploy phases since the deliverables have different delivery cadences and different approaches. The website will have early deliveries to inform the public of the progress for the community center. Some senior services and the CAP training may begin prior to the opening of the community center. Each deliverable may have a separate review prior to entering the testing phase.
• Test. This phase will overlap with the development and deploy phases. The type of test will depend on the deliverable. This phase includes inspections for the building, a beta delivery of the CAP courses, small-scale trials for the senior services, and operating in a test environment for each release for the website. Each deliverable will go through the applicable testing prior to moving to the deploy phase.
• Deploy. This phase will overlap with the development and test phases. The first deployment of the website may be somewhat early in the project. Activities in this phase will iterate as more deliverables become available. The final deployment for the project will be the opening of the community center. Ongoing updates to the website and the senior services will be part of operations once the community center is open.
• Close. This phase takes place periodically as deliverables are completed. When the initial website has been deployed, project personnel (including contractors) will be released and retrospectives or lessons learned for each deliverable will be completed. When the entire project is done, information from the various phase gate reviews and an overall evaluation of project performance compared to baselines will be conducted. Prior to final closeout, the project charter and the business case will be reviewed to determine if the deliverables achieved the intended benefits and value.

Figure 2-12 shows a possible life cycle for the community center project. The start-up and planning phases are sequential. The development, test, and deploy phases overlap because the different deliverables will be developed, tested, and deployed at different times, and some deliverables will have multiple deliveries. The development phase is shown in more detail to demonstrate different timing and delivery cadence. The test phase cadence would follow the development phase cadence. The deliveries are shown in the deploy phase.