In the Inception Phase, analysis and design is concerned with establishing whether the system as envisioned is feasible, and with assessing potential technologies for the solution (in Activity: Perform Architectural Synthesis). If it is felt that little risk attaches to the development (because, for example, the domain is well understood, the system is not novel, and so on) then this activity may be omitted.

The early Elaboration Phase focuses on creating an initial architecture for the system ( Activity: Define a Candidate Architecture) to provide a starting point for the main analysis work. If the architecture already exists (either because it was produced in previous iterations, in previous projects, or is obtained from an application framework), the focus of the work changes to refining the architecture (Activity: Refine the Architecture. An initial set of elements is created which provide the appropriate behavior ( Activity: Analyze Behavior).

After the initial elements are identified, they are further refined. Activity: Design Components produce a set of components which provide the appropriate behavior to satisfy the requirements on the system. If the system includes a database, then Activity: Design the Database occurs in parallel. The result is an initial set of components which are further refined in Capability Pattern: Implementation