The purpose in this phase is to achieve concurrence among all stakeholders on the lifecycle objectives for the project.

There are four objectives of the Inception phase that clarify the scope, project objectives, and feasibility of the intended solution [KRO03]:

1. Understand what to build. Determine and overal vision, including scope of the system and its boundaries. Identify the stakeholders - who is interested in this system - and what are their success criteria.

2. Identify key system functionality. Decide which requirements are most critical.

3. Determine at least one possible solution. Assess if the vision is technically feasible. This may involve identifying a candidate high-level architecture and/or doing technical prototypes.

4. Understand the high-level estimate for cost, schedule, and risks associated with the project.

Key considerations

Projects may have one or more iterations in the Inception phase. Among reasons for multiple iterations in Inception, you find:

• Project is large, and it is hard to define its scope.
• Unprecedented system.
• Too many stakeholders with competing needs and complex relationships.
• Major technical risks demand the creation of a prototype or proof of concept.

There are some commonly observed anti-patterns during Inception phase. Some teams postpone providing estimates until they analyze the entire domain and have written a large amount of requirements documentation. This behavior often leads to analysis-paralysis. Another anti-pattern is poor planning of Inception iterations. Avoid such anti-patterns by planning iterations in Inception, in a way that iterations are risk-driven, include early integration and testing, and produce a demoable product increment. By default, have one (potentially short) iteration in Inception so to avoid analysis-paralysis.