What is RUP? Rational unified modelling? : Business Analysts and System Analysts FAQ

Rational Unified Process is what is commonly known as RUP. It was developed by the IBM Corporation. A part of the IBM Corporation is the Rational Software Corporation which developed the RUP.

RUP is an adaptable and iterative software process framework. It is not prescriptive or singular process.

Rational Unified Process Origin

The Rational Unified Process framework was originally developed and created by its namesake, Rational Software. IBM then took over Rational Software in 2003.

What is Rational Unified Process (RUP)?

Rational Unified Process is an iterative adaptive software process. RUP framework is built on blocks or content elements. The main blocks answer the questions of who, what and how. The “Who” part is encompassed in the block “Roles “which define certain related responsibilities and competencies. The “What “part is encompassed in the building block “Work Products “that defines the result of a task. The “How” part is encompassed in the building block “Tasks “which is nothing but a unit of work that is assigned to a Role and which is intended to produce a result.

Iteration consists of nine disciplines. Out of these nine disciplines, six are engineering disciplines like Business Modeling, Requirements, Design and Analysis, Implementation, Test, Deployment and remaining there are supporting disciplines which consist of Configuration and Change Management, Environment and Project Management. These iterations have to be followed with guidelines and templates at each stage. This way RUP provides a set of standards to be adhered to for all the stages of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The RUP consists of a life cycle with four distinct phases as listed below.

The RUP Life Cycle phases:

1) INCEPTION

2) ELABORATION

3) CONSTRUCTION

4) TRANSITION

1) INCEPTION: Inception is the phase where the concept is actually commenced or initiated. The concept is explored with the definition of the scope of business, the stakeholders, cost benefit analysis, feasibility analysis etc. Inception phase provides a strong foundation to the phases to come next. Hence Inception phase must be properly planned and done.

2) ELABORATION: Elaboration is the second phase after Inception. Here the first draft is finalized and the requirements are finalized so that the work can take place.

3) CONSTRUCTION: Construction is the third phase of the RUP Life Cycle. As can be thought, in the CONSTRUCTION phase, the actual work begins. The software is actually ‘constructed’ in this phase and most important of all - the coding part of the project; is done in this phase. Testing is also done in this phase itself.

4) TRANSITION: Transition is the final phase of the RUP Life Cycle. Any project, no matter how good it may have been conceptualized and developed, needs to be successfully complete the transition phase at the client’s end .Here, software is released to the client and support phase then effectively starts.

USE OF RUP:

By its adaptive nature, RUP is a framework that can be used by any corporation or software project team for its purpose, by choosing the elements they need from it. It is this specific adaptive tailoring as per needs feature of RUP which makes it highly popular with the developers team and the industry.

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