The inception phase of the requirements workflow of the unified process of software development.

The aim of the inception phase is to determine whether it is worthwhile to develop the target software product. In other words, the primary aim of this phase is to determine whether the proposed software product is economically viable.

Two steps of the requirements workflow are to understand the domain and build a business model. Clearly, there is no way the developers can give any kind of opinion regarding a possible future software product unless they first understand the domain in which they are considering developing the target software product.

Once the developers have a full comprehension of the domain, the second step is to build a business model, that is, a description of the client’s business processes to understand precisely how the client organization operates in that domain.

Now the scope of the target project has to be delimited. For example, consider a proposed software product for a new highly secure ATM network for a nationwide chain of banks. The size of the business model of the banking chain as a whole is likely to be huge. To determine what the target software product should incorporate, the developers have to focus on only a subset of the business model, namely, the subset covered by the proposed software product. Therefore, delimiting the scope of the proposed project is the third step.

Adaptado de: SCHACH, S. Object-Oriented and Classical

Software Engineering. 8. ed. McGrawHill, 2011.

Disponível em: http://www.ucccs.info/ucc/ucc3/ucc_folder/

cs3500/books/Object%20Oriented%20And%20Classical%

20Software%20Engineering%208th%20Edition%

20V413HAV.pdf.

Acessado em: 20/07/2015.