Software Development Process
The IBM Rational Software Development Platform gives you a common software development experience, spanning all the steps in a project, from inception through deployment. The result is a technology environment that maximizes your organization's collective strength across your business, operations, and development teams. Figure 1 illustrates the steps of the business-driven development process.
Figure 1: Business-driven development process
The outside of the circle shows the typical steps involved in the development process. The center of the circle shows four principles or imperatives for a successful software project. These imperatives include:
To ensure success, the IBM Rational Software Development Platform is tightly coupled with the de-facto industry-standard process for iterative development -- IBM Rational Unified Process®, or RUP®. RUP is a flexible, proven, and configurable business process for both large and small development projects.
RUP is both a software development methodology framework and a proven, flexible process solution. Through its configurable architecture, RUP enables you to select and deploy only the process components you need for each project. With industry-proven software engineering best practices at its core, the RUP solution includes tools for configuring RUP for your project's specific needs, tools for developing your own internal knowledge into process components, and customizable Web-based deployment capabilities.
The four phases of RUP will contain multiple iterations, but the focus of the iterations will evolve over the course of the project.
Another benefit of the IBM Rational Software Development Platform is how it provides offerings for all members of the software development team. These team members are illustrated in Figure 2 , with the activities associated with each person's role. The Rational Team Unifying Platform includes the tools and processes that integrate the activities for all the roles.
Figure 2: IBM Rational Software Development Platform roles
You can learn more about the IBM Rational Software Development Platform from the following resources: