The Initiate stage can be divided into three sub-stages:

• Plan: Align the vision and roadmap to establish the foundation for the implementation, which includes:
  • Defining the production release milestone
  • Refining scope alignment
  • Determining the implementation methodology
• Setup: Validate and review the Pega-provided features and capabilities with customer requirements and expectations, which includes:
  • Establishing environments and processes
  • Creating the baseline application
  • Loading sample data
  • Demonstrating the baseline application
  • Performing a gap analysis
  • Reviewing business needs and outcomes
• Prepare: Prepare for and implement the final Product Designer application into the organization. Integration is beyond the scope of this guide, which does not discuss integration tasks, which includes:
  • Confirming resources
  • Enabling team members
  • Establishing governance

At the end of the Initiate stage, the scope of the work for the first production release is defined. For scrum deliveries, the scope of the work is identified with an initial backlog; for an iterative waterfall delivery, a specification list and schedule are prepared and finalized.