The Unified Software Development Process repeats over a series of cycles that eventually make up the life-cycle of the system. Each cycle concludes with a product release to the client. Each cycle consists of four phases: inception, elaboration, construction, transition and post-product review.

Inception Phase

In the Inception phase, PTI will determine whether or not the project is of value. We ask the question, "is the project worth doing?" PTI will assess what the system is going to do for each of its major users, what the system's architecture will look like, and what it will cost to develop. The outcome of the project must provide value to the client such as increased revenues, decreased costs, or both.

During the Inception phase, PTI will determine the risks associated with the project as well as the value to the client. Projects with estimated lower risks and higher values are more likely to progress to the Elaboration phase. In addition, PTI will assesses goals, objectives, scope, value, and risk during this and all subsequent phases.

Elaboration Phase

Once a project passes the inception phase and a decision has been made to proceed with the project, the project moves to the second phase. In the elaboration phase, PTI will thoroughly analyze the project.

Most of the product's use cases are specified in detail and the system architecture is designed. During the architectural design and analysis area, PTI proves that the key architectural design elements work. We do this by executing significant use cases, which are retained and reused later in the construction phase.

PTI mitigates risks by planning iterations to validate high-risk areas early in the project. We then build executable prototypes to prove technical concepts. PTI plans the project by building the work breakdown structure, defining tasks, and identifying necessary resources.

Next we schedule the project by setting milestones and determining key delivery dates. PTI and client managers must then make several decisions before proceeding to the next phase. Milestones enable management as well as our engineers to monitor the progress of the work. By tracking time and effort spent on each phase, PTI uses this critical information to estimate time and staffing requirements for other projects. We can also plan staffing requirements over the duration of the project and control any variances between the projections and the outcome.

Construction Phase

During the construction phase, PTI defines construction iterations and prioritizes use cases. In this phase, the architecture baseline grows to a the full-fledged system. This full-fledged system evolves into a product ready for users. Once we determine that the product meets user needs sufficiently, we progress to the transition phase.

Transition Phase

The transition phase is the final step of our project management process. PTI turns the system over to the users for beta testing; at this time we identify issues requiring correction or additional development. PTI engineers will correct any reported problems and incorporate any suggested improvements in the release to a larger community of users. We will sufficiently train the system users so they can better understand how to take advantage of the new system that has been developed.

Post-Product Review

Once PTI has developed a system, we engage in a post-product review to assess the system we have just developed. At this time, we identify processes that were successful, problems PTI came across, and resolutions to those issues. We strive to re-create the "successes" we came across in past development scenarios while keeping in mind obstacles experienced. The types of questions we ask ourselves include: