NSV-8 captures evolution plans that describe how the system, or the architecture in which the system is embedded, will evolve over a lengthy period of time.

To successfully understand the time evolutions, timeline milestones are very important. In Information system planning, master plans are used to define long term evolutions of system that will best respond to business function demands.

The HOPEX NAF allows the user to create master plans that describe system evolution. A master plan is composed of milestones where life periods of architecture items are constrained. The master plans are used to describe system evolution scenarios and depending on the analysis of these scenarios, the scenarios can either be elected, rejected or postponed.

An architecture contains one or more master plans. Each of them describes the evolution of different parts of the system. A specific master plan is used to describe the overall evolution of the system. The creation of this master plan is transparent to the user. It enables the creation of top level scenarios.

For further information on Master Plan modeling, see the HOPEX Planning documentation.