Planning the technical effort

The engineering plan shall be prepared and updated throughout the system life cycle to guide and eontrol the technical efforts of the projeet The engineering plan should reflect an integrated technical effort responsible for product development, whieh addresses all factors associated with meeting system life cycle reqniremmts. 

The engineering plan should reflect the contents identified in Annex B, which provides a generic outline and description of the contents for an engineering plan. If an evolutionary or incremental development strategy is to be pursued, the engineering plan should address the development strategy for initial product development and insertion of incremental technology enhancements. 

The master schedule should be prepared and updated throughout the system life cycle to establish key events, their significant tasks, and the criteria by which completion of significant tasks are determined. A properly designed master schedule should allow for the scheduling of activities associated with tasks, allocation of resources, budget preparation, assignment of personnel, establishment of task start and end dates, and event completion criteria. 

The detail schedule should provide a calendar-based schedule of activities, tasks, and key events of the master schedule. The detail schedule should be used to track the progress of the technical effort. Detail schedule data should be used to construct a network of events, tasks, and activities to determine the critical path of the engineering efforts and to analyze variances to schedule. 

Technical plans shall be prepared to supplement the engineering plan, as needed. Technical plans should be prepared by the engineering and technical specialty areas to which they apply and should be used to measure technical progress against the plans. Technical plans are typically prepared for risk management, configura- 

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