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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

What is meant by Rational Unified Process?


RUP or rational unified process - refinement of the unified process has been categorized among the most popular and commonly used iterative software development process frame works. The rational unified process has been a trade mark of the IBM Corporation since the year of 2003 when it was developed by the rational software corporation. 
The rational software corporation has long been recognized as a division of the IBM. 

What is a Rational Unified Process?


- Rational unified process as it sounds is an adaptable process frame work rather than being a single and concrete prescriptive process. 
- The rational unified process serves as a frame work that can be tailored according to the needs and objectives of the software development organizations and the project development teams who are responsible for the selection of the elements of the development process that fit their needs. 
You can call the rational unified process as a specific implementation of the unified process since it is absolutely right. 
Rational unified process is a kind of software process product which was acquired by the IBM from the rational software corporation. 
- The rational unified process forms a part of the IBM RMC (rational method composer) using which the whole development process can be customized. 

Based on the experience of the implementation of the RMC for various projects, the below mentioned 6 practices were declared as best practices for modern software engineering:
     1. Iterative development using risk as the primary iteration driver.
     2. Management of the requirements.
     3. Employment of an architecture based on components.
     4. Visual modelling of the software system or application.
     5. Continuous verification of the quality.
     6. Keeping the changes under the control.

Rational unified process contributes greatly in making improvements in the quality of the software system or application and in predicting the software development efforts.

Aspects of Rational Unified Process


The rational unified process is characterized by its following three aspects:
     1. It can be tailored according to the needs that will guide the development process.
     2. It is a tool that can be used for the automation of the whole development process.
     3. It is a service that serves for the accelerated adoption of all the processes and the tools involved.

Rational unified process was actually developed in the year of 1996. The year of 1997 saw the addition of the requirements and the test discipline to the rational unified process. In the year of 1998 again two new aspects were added to the process namely the business modelling and change. Apart from these, some techniques were also added that included:
     1. Performance testing
     2. UI design
     3. Data engineering

With all these techniques the rational unified process was updated to the UML 1.3. the rational unified process constitutes of some set of building blocks that describe the functionality which is to be produced. 
Below mentioned are the main building blocks:
     1. Roles
     2. Work products
     3.  Tasks

Nine disciplines governing the tasks have been defined:
     1. Deployment
     2. Implementation
     3. Requirements
     4. Business modelling
     5. Analysis and design
     6. Test
    In addition to these nine disciplines there are 3 additional disciplines:
    1. Environment
    2. Configuration management
    3. Project management
    
   Like the normal unified process, the rational unified process also consists of the 4 phases namely:
     1. Inception
     2. Elaboration
     3. Construction
     4. Transition

The RMC product has proved to be quite an effective tool for configuring, authoring, publishing and viewing processes with rational unified process incorporated in to it. The above mentioned 6 practices are now recognized as a paradigm in the field of software engineering for designing any software and increasing productivity. The development cycle is said to finish when the product release milestone is reached. 


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