Using AUP, the team identified more than 10 use cases and key requirements in this phase. The project manager made cost and schedule estimates used for iterations in later phases (mostly during elaboration). This doesn’t mean that she planned out the entire project at this point. As with all planning, those tasks scheduled for completion in the near future were detailed more accurately and with greater confidence, whereas tasks further down the line were understood to be estimates with larger margins of error.
The team also defined the project’s risks during inception. The list of risks was a living compilation that changed over time. Risks drive project management, just as the highest-priority risks drive iteration scheduling. Earlier iterations addressed higher-priority risks. Difficulties the team initially identified included
■■communicating the new architecture’s benefits to the users and producing really useful results;
■■meeting scheduling requirements due to the project’s innovative approach;
■■maintaining management and user commitment throughout all phases; and
potential incompatibility between project requirements and the bank’s culture and infrastructure.