Abstract
IBM Rational advocates the Rational Unified Process, hereafter referred to as RUP, as a software development process. RUP is a comprehensive technical process/guidelines based on the best practices in the object-oriented and component based software development. This paper explains the best practices of RUP, comparing them with traditional development methodologies that are successful. While revealing the underlying characteristics of the technical development area for which RUP is intended, this paper shows that many of the differences between RUP and traditional methodologies come from the challenges which are unique to respective target technical areas.
