Author: Andy Starzhinsky

RUP artefacts in a context of phases

Software development process according to the Rational Unified Process is broken intro phases. Each phase has a cycles, each cycle working on a new generation of the product. The results in a cycle in general calls artifacts.

Summary description of the possible artifacts after each phase and evaluation criteria are represented.

Inception Phase

Typical artifacts that could be produced:

• A vision document: a general vision of the core project’s requirements, key features, and main constraints.

• A initial use-case model, 10% -20% complete.

• A business model, if necessary.

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What’s new in .NET Framework 4.0 for business?

Of course new .NET Framework 4.0 has features that could be used by developers mostly.
In general for business .NET 4.0 Framework main focus is on performance and security improvement.
There are some features that could be useful for end users, development enterprise and business application, business application design and architecture.

– Memory-Mapped Files.
The .NET Framework now supports memory-mapped files. Developers can use memory-mapped files to edit very large files and to create shared memory for interprocess communication.

– 64-Bit Operating Systems and Processes.
Developers can identify 64-bit operating systems and processes. This will increase performance of both server and desktop side application.

– Client Profile.
Main features is integration with MS Office applications. All Office 2007 and Office 2010 project templates.

– Integrated Windows Authentication.
A lot of existing troubles with authentication could be solver.

– Networking performance.
Support for Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal using IPv6 and Teredo.

– Windows Workflow Foundation
This tools could be used for UML modeling. It could help software architects to design business architecture and describe business logic.
The main feature is Workflow Activity Model also known as ‘Activity diagram’ with rich composite activity options and Built-In Activity Library.

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Rational Unified Process Core Workflows: Business Modeling

Rational Unified Process Core Workflows: Business Modeling

Based on Rational Software White Paper “Best Practices for Software Development Teams”

The core process workflows in RUP are divided into six core “engineering” workflows:

  • Business modelling workflow;

  • Requirements workflow;

  • Analysis & Design workflow;

  • Implementation workflow;

  • Test workflow;

  • Deployment workflow;

Business Modelling

One of the major problems with most business engineering efforts, is that the software engineering and the business engineering community [1] do not communicate properly with each other. This leads to the output from business engineering is not being used properly as input to the software development effort. The Rational Unified Process addresses this by providing a common language and process for both communities, as well as showing how to create and maintain direct traceability between business and software models.

In Business Modeling we document business processes using so called business use cases. This assures a common understanding among all stakeholders of what business process needs to be supported in the organization. The business use cases are analyzed to understand how the business should support the business processes. This is documented in a business object model. Many projects may not to do business modeling.
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Mapping XP phases in to RUP model

General XP’s phases are exploration, commitment and steering. At the release level, these align with particular collections of activities, called workflow details in the RUP Project Management discipline.
Exploration and Commitment phases could be mapped into the Plan for Next Iteration and Steering could be mapped into Monitor and Control Project phase.

In Extreme Programming by Kent Beck, there is a lifecycle of an ideal XP project, and the first level headings are exploration, planning, iterations to first release, ‘productionizing’, maintenance and death . These appear to be the top-level phases, but it turns out this is not quite accurate. An XP project will be bounded by an initial exploratory phase and “death” when the project is closed out. But the major beat is the release and each release has an exploration phase . So the exploration phase that brackets the project (and leads into the first release) is a special case in that there is an initial gate to pass at which a decision is made on the wisdom of continuing at all. Both XP releases and iterations have the three phases exploration, commitment, and steering. “Maintenance” really characterizes the nature of the XP project after the first release.
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Subcontracting in the RUP Scope

The Subcontracting Scenario Concept

We can define typical scenarios to understand the multiple subcontracting strategies based on the Rational process. Each scenario has a remarkable characteristic that predominates in the set, and many other secondary characteristics that result from the first one. A real project case can use more than one scenario to represent its problem.

The main characteristic of a scenario is to define what point, in the development process, the contracting organization wants to reach. In other words, which software models the contracting party wants to produce internally. This subset of models can give it internal communication security, control over the problem, and is probably already part of the developer and manage experience. The immediate implication in terms of RUP is to ask which artifacts the contracting party will it execute and which ones will purchase from third parties. This can be said in a different manner: based on which model (Artifact) does the contracting party want to contract service execution?

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Expectations in outsourcing

What companies expects from outsourcing development? Different companies and people has a different reasons when they consider to use outsourcing business model. However there are some common expectations that everyone has.

Outsourcing is cost effective. That is an expectation and one of the main reasons why outsourcing is so prominent and popular business model. But that is not sole what outsourcing buyer would like to find in the supplier’s company. There are some other skills that companies expects to see in the team. Some of the customers explicitly require such skills, but some of them just keeps it in mind. And here it possible to face with the misunderstanding. So choosing outsourcing partner ask yourself what do you expect from the outsourcing service provider.

Industry \ market knowledge. Most customers needs not just Senior .NET Developer, they needs for example .NET developer with knowledge of financial market. Financial industry is wide spread and it’s not so difficult to find developer who knows differences between covered and uncovered option. What if company works in Oil&Gas industry? Are the additional time, budget and place to wait while the team will learn basic industry information and will they?

Business process knowledge. This is little bit different from that team members should understand only customer’s market. In the software that should be developed could be rather complicated business process and dependencies. It could be additional benefit to have in the supplier’s team an expert who could understand all the processes and dependencies in customer’s company.

Is it possible to receive from supplier: “We don’t know about those modules, it’s too complicated” or get functionality which will broke some business process. Or better to have an answer like “Yes, and when we will implement this feature it will change modules A and B”?

Consulting. You would like to be sure that your supplier understand you, your business and your needs. What if your supplier could help to optimize or improve your business. Not as separate consulting company, just as a part of a project. Not mush outsourcing companies could do this. This could show the high-class of the outsourcing company.