Advantages of the Unified Software Development Process

Question

Why adopt the UP process over others? What are the relative advantages? I know that it is closely coupled with UML but clearly this cannot be the only advantage? Why choose this approach over others?

Answer 1

I think it really depends against what process/methodology you compare. Without details, only general characteristics of UP can be mentioned. It is iterative incremental methodology with well described roles and activities, using modeling techniques in object oriented analysis and design. It is vertically (time) divided in phases and those in iterations and horizontally into groups of activities concerning different aspects of software development, such as requirements, analysis, design, testing deployment etc...

Answer 2

I am certified in RUP and a Scrum Master. Most teams find that no process "off the shelf" is a perfect fit. That being said, the Unified Process focuses on driving risk out of a project early. However, I have seen many implementations where UP introduces a level of risk simply by being overly complex. Depending on the nature of the project, organizational structure, and other factors such as compliance and scale, UP offers a set of practices that can be easily tailored.

Answer 3

Although we are not practitioners of the full UP processes, we use it frequently to see what type of products we need and which roles will have the responsibility to perform the activities for that product. We like it, because it details the various aspects from design until the deployment phase and comes with various templates, guidelines and processes which help out in the development life-cycle.

Take a look at : http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/openup/

As we are a team where members can play different roles depending the projects, we simply navigate to the role, and check what products are needed for the project at hand. Depending the weight/complexity of the project we will choose the products that will help us in our daily duties. UML is an asset which we highly depend upon and comes as a benefit within OpenUP (or other UP incarnations).