The Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a software engineering process framework. It provides a disciplined customer-focused approach to assigning and managing tasks and responsibilities in a software development process. The RUP guides software practitioners in effectively applying modern best practices for software, such as developing iteratively and incrementally, taking an architecture-centric approach, mitigating risk at every stage in the process, and continuously verifying the quality of the software. Although the RUP is quite comprehensive, enhancements are required, specifically in the areas of Architecture, Project Management, and Product Development. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) leads in the architecture field, specifically in the areas of architecture definition, architecture documentation, architecture evaluation, and the software product line approach. These approaches, along with others, can be used and integrated into the RUP. The flexibility of the RUP allows these additional approaches to be integrated into a robust process framework. This presentation gives an overview of the enhancements we made to the RUP—specifically in the area of architecture—and how we use the techniques from the SEI to help overcome these issues. It will highlight the areas where the techniques where used, how effective they were, were we differed in approaches, and some of the challenges we were faced with as we introduced the changes.

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PRESENTATION