Introduction to Rational Unified Process
The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a software development process. Rational Software Corporation develops it; now, it is part of IBM from 2003. It controls the development process and produces a high-quality software product. It is nothing but a model for the software development process. This development process involves multiple stages like business modeling or planning, analysis and design, implementation or coding, testing, and deployment, etc.
Workflows of Rational Unified Process
This process passes through six main workflows and three supporting workflows:
Main Workflows:
- Business Modelling(Planning)
- Requirement Gathering
- Analysis & Design
- Coding
- Testing
- Deployment
Supporting Workflows:
- Project Management
- Configuration &Change Management
- Environment Management
The Rational Unified Process is a combination of building blocks used to describe who, what, when, and how the development process will occur.
These four building blocks are:
- (Roles) the ‘Who’: It shows who are the responsibilities for developing the software product. It may be an individual or a group of individuals together as a team who work on it.
- (Work Products) the ‘What’: It indicates what will be produced. That shows the behavior and type of software product.
- (Workflows) the ‘When’: It represents the flowchart of activities in order to produce a software product.
- (Tasks) the ‘How’: It describes how the development will take place, i.e. a unit of work assigned to a Role to perform and that provides a meaningful result.
Phases Involved in the Rational Unified Process
It consists of four phases to complete the RUP process, and each phase having a specific purpose.
- Inception Phase
- Elaboration Phase
- Construction Phase
- Transition Phase
1. Inception Phase
It is the initial phase of the developing process. During this phase, the project’s basic ideas and structure will be determined to prepare a business suite, i.e. the team will decide the purpose of the project, success criteria, estimated cost, risk assessment, scheduled time, and resources required to complete it etc. It is just like an evaluation of the project. The project may be canceled or consider depends on if it fails to pass the below criteria.
The conclusions of the inception phase are:
- It provides a general vision project initiative document with multiple parameters.
- We get the project scope with the initial project model.
- An initial business suite with financial analysis.
- A project plan with different phases with a business model.
- Requirement understanding.
- Actual expenditures versus planned expenditures.
- Actual expenditures versus planned expenditures.
2. Elaboration Phase
This is the second phase of the development process. During this phase, to analyze the project’s requirements and necessary architecture, i.e. to review the problems, develop the project plan and architect, and eliminate the high-risk elements from the project. It is the most critical phase among the four phases. The actual development and coding will take place in the following phase.
The conclusions of the Elaboration phase are:
- It provides a full model of the project with functional and non-functional requirements.
- It provides a full Software Architecture Description.
- It provides the stability of the project, like the vision of the product & architecture of product stable or not?
- Similarly, the project plan will approve or not?
- Is the actual resource cost versus planned resource cost acceptable or not?
3. Construction Phase
This is the third phase of the development process. During this phase, the project is developed and completed. Here all the features are developed and integrated into the product, i.e. the software is designed, written, and tested successfully. So the development product will be a deployable product. It measures the completeness of the product.
The conclusions of the Construction phase are:
- The software product integrated over different modules.
- It provides a user manual.
- Is the product release stable or not?
- Is it meets client requirements or not?
- Is the actual resource cost versus planned resource cost acceptable or not?
4. Transition Phase
This is the last phase of the development process. During this phase, the software is released and delivered to the public or customers. Based on the feedback from the end-users, the product will be made update or change. It is the process of deployment.
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The conclusions of the Transition phase are:
- It is one type of “beta testing” to validate the product as per user expectations.
- It provides the end-user to satisfy or not.
- All types of training manuals for the user.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Rational Unified Process
Following are some advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
- It allows us to deal with changing requirements within the project’s development life cycle as per the client or customer needs, i.e. it welcomes change.
- It supports incremental build the software product.
- It provides proper documentation of the software product.
- It helps to use the resources efficiently.
- It helps to identify issues early in the process life cycle.
- It improves process control and risk management.
- It enhances team productivity.
- It helps reduces unexpected development costs.
Disadvantages
- It is a complex model to implement as it has multiple stages of the workflow.
- It is challenging for organizations to implement which has, small team size or projects.
- It should be highly result-oriented from individuals or teams.
- It emphasizes the integration of modules throughout the software development process, so this creates trouble during the testing phase.
Conclusion
This article discusses the Rational Unified Process (RUP), which is an Iterative process for software development. It deals with managing requirements, component-based architecture, software model, risk control, welcome to changes and software quality.
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