Data Process Object Modelling

...

- 4What is the rational unified process

- It is a software engineering process that provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within a development organization.

- It has clear set of goals and that is to ensure high quality production of softwares that meets the need of end users, within a limited predictable time and a benefitting budget.

- It is a process with is responsible for working closely with customers, partners, Rational’s product groups and consulting organizations.

- They ensure that processes are updated and improved to reflect recent experiences and thus improve best practices for the benefit of clients.

- Rational unified process is a also a guide for how to effectively use the UML.

- This process is configurable, what this means is it understands that no single process is suitable for all software development.

- Therefore it is designed in such a way that it fits small development teams as well as large development organization

- One of the biggest hurdles it avoids is to bring the entire team on the same platform, it provides commonality across a family of processes.

- Effective deployment of 6 best practices

- Rational Unified Process describes some best practices because they are observed to be commonly used in industries by successful organizations.

- Amongst which are developing software iteratively, managing requirements, use component based architectures, visually model software and to control changes to software’s.

- Develop software iteratively – It is needed to develop a software which is refined and has grown effective due to multiple iterations.

- Manage Requirements – Rational unified Process describes how to elicit, organize, and document required functionality and constraints, track and document tradeoffs and decisions and easily capture and communicate business requirements.

- Use Component based architecture – Rational Unified Processes support component based software development. They provide a systematic approach to defining an architecture using new and existing components.

- Visually Model software – Process allows us to see how to visually model software to capture the structure and behavior of architecture and components.

- Verify Software Quality – Rational unified process assists us to plan, design, implement ,execute and evaluate different tests to verify performance, functionality, reliability and so on.

- Control Changes to Software – It provides with an ability to manage change and make certain that change I acceptable .

- Process overview

- Process is described by drawing a two dimensional graph that consist of time and shows dynamic aspects of the process as it is enacted and its expressed in terns of cycles, phases, iterations and milestones on the X-axis

- The vertical Y axis is the static aspect of the process

- Phases and iterations – the time dimension

- Rational unified process has a phase implementation

- It divides lifecycle in to phases such as Inception phase, Elaboration phase, construction phase and transition phase.

- There are milestones which decides the completion of a phase.

- Inception Phase :- Business case for the system and limit to the project scope is done in this phase. It involves identifying all external entities with which system will interact and define the nature of these interactions.

- Elaboration phase :- Problem analysis is the main function of this phase, strong architectural foundations are established, project plans are developed and high risk factors are eliminated in this phase. It is arguable the most important phase.

- Construction Phase :- Integration of all left out components and application features into the product is the main purpose of this phase, Resources are managed and costs, schedules and quality are optimally managed.

- Transition Phase :- Main purpose of this phase is to transition the software product to the user community. Correction of problems, resolving past unfinished problem and so on takes place in this phase. Tests are conducted and finally product is transferred into the hands of users with belief that it will yield positive results for all parties.

- Iteration :- Complete development loop resulting of an executable product, a subset of the final product under development, which grows incrementally from iteration to iteration to become final system.

- They help us mitigate risks, Have more manageable changes, High level of reuse, Better overall quality with better learning of the process for the team.

References:

- Thomas H Davenport, James E.Short “The new Industrial Engineering IT and Business Process Redesign” Sloan school of Management Summer 1990.

- Scrum Development Process by Ken Schwaber,1995 , Scrum Development Process.

- J.A.Zachman “A framework for information systems architecture “

- Rational Software White Paper, Rational Unified Process, Best Practices for software Development Teams.

- David E.Avison and Guy Fitzgerald ,2003, “Where Now for Development Methodologies ?” Communications of the ACM, Vol 46, Issue 1, pg 78-82.

- Dennis A, B.H.Wixom , D.Tegarden 2002, “Systems Amalysis and Design : An object oriented approach with UML,” John Wiley and Sons, Inc , NY.

...