4 a ) it hase been said that “ 9 in 10 waterfall-based software projects fail “

Question

4
a ) it hase been said that “ 9 in 10 waterfall-based software projects fail “ . discuss what you would consider to be the major causes of failure in the traditional process and why , and how these are avoided in a modern process such as Rational Unified Process .
B ) comment critically on the claim that the Rational Unified Process is a configurable process model . Use your coursework experience to suport your argument .
C ) according to Royce , an important principle is Build the architecture first . Explane what an “ architecture “ is and outline how the RUP be support this principle .
D ) give and explane three criteria by witch the RUP Inception phase can be evaluated in order to decide whether to proceed to next phase .

Explanation / Answer

The question that must be bothering you now is that what could be the possible disadvantages of the waterfall model. Well, there are some disadvantages of this widely accepted model too. Let us look at a few of them. Ironically, the biggest disadvantage of the waterfall model is one of its greatest advantage. You cannot go back, if the design phase has gone wrong, things can get very complicated in the implementation phase. Many times, it happens that the client is not very clear of what he exactly wants from the software. Any changes that he mentions in between may cause a lot of confusion. Small changes or errors that arise in the completed software may cause a lot of problem. The greatest disadvantage of the waterfall model is that until the final stage of the development cycle is complete, a working model of the software does not lie in the hands of the client. Thus, he is hardly in a position to mention if what has been designed is exactly what he had asked for. Rational Unified Process plus points: Although Waterfall methodology and RUP have defined fixed phases, there are key differences between these two models. The main deference is that while Waterfall methodology is clearly a sequential process with prescribed steps in which current phase is completed before going to the next phase, RUP is an iterative process. Unlike the waterfall methodology, RUP develops the product in several stages based on feedback from the stockholders. Because each RUP iteration produces an executable release, the customers get to realize benefits much earlier than Waterfall. Finally, Waterfall methodology is a prescriptive concrete process, while RUP is an adaptable framework of software processes. The Rational Unified Process optimizes the productivity of every team member by putting experience derived from thousands of projects and many industry leaders at your fingertips. The Rational Unified Process was developed hand-in hand with the industry-standard UML, created by Rational® Software with the help of many of our partners. The Rational Unified Process provides each team member with prescriptive guidelines for successful implementation of the six best practices that enable efficient development of high-quality enterprise applications: 1)Develop iteratively to mitigate risk early in the project 2)Effectively manage requirements 3)Model visually to manage complexity 4)Use component architectures to build resilient architectures 5)Verify quality throughout the lifecycle 6)Control changes to software B)Process Made Practical The Rational Unified Process simplifies the adoption of best practices by providing an e-coach on each desktop. The e-coach is an easy-to-use online mentor that assists development teams in carrying out all daily activities. Presented via HTML format for universal, platform-independent access across a corporate intranet, the e-coach provides powerful graphical navigation capabilities that let users easily find productivity-enhancing software development guidelines and time-saving document templates for every step of the development project. The Rational Unified Process helps organizations leverage the full capabilities of leading Rational development tools. 1)Tool mentors describe how to use tools to successfully implement the process, ensuring that development teams effectively deploy these tools for the full software lifecycle. 2)Extended Help provides context-sensitive help within Rational tools, making it easy to find immediate and relevant process guidance for the task at hand. c)The software architecture of a system is the set of structures needed to reason about the system, which comprise software elements, relations among them, and properties of both.[1] The term also refers to documentation of a system's "software architecture." Documenting software architecture facilitates communication between stakeholders, documents early decisions about high-level design, and allows reuse of design components and patterns between projects. RUP is based on a set of building blocks, or content elements, describing what is to be produced, the necessary skills required and the step-by-step explanation describing how specific development goals are to be achieved. The main building blocks, or content elements, are the following: Roles (who) – A Role defines a set of related skills, competencies and responsibilities. Work Products (what) – A Work Product represents something resulting from a task, including all the documents and models produced while working through the process. Tasks (how) – A Task describes a unit of work assigned to a Role that provides a meaningful result. Within each iteration, the tasks are categorized into nine disciplines: Six "engineering disciplines" Business Modeling Requirements Analysis and Design Implementation Test Deployment Three supporting disciplines Configuration and Change Management Project Management Environment The process focuses on early development and baselining of a robust executable architecture, prior to committing resources for full-scale development. It describes how to design a resilient architecture that is flexible, accommodates change, is intuitively understandable, and promotes more effective software reuse. The Rational Unified Process supports component-based software development. Components are non-trivial modules, subsystems that fulfill a clear function. The Rational Unified Process provides a systematic approach to defining an architecture using new and existing components. These are assembled in a well-defined architecture, either ad hoc, or in a component infrastructure such as the Internet, CORBA, and COM, for which an industry of reusable components is emerging. Thus the architecure is constructed in RUP. D)Inception Phase The primary objective is to scope the system adequately as a basis for validating initial costing and budgets. In this phase the business case which includes business context, success factors (expected revenue, market recognition, etc.), and financial forecast is established. To complement the business case, a basic use case model, project plan, initial risk assessment and project description (the core project requirements, constraints and key features) are generated. After these are completed, the project is checked against the following criteria: Stakeholder concurrence on scope definition and cost/schedule estimates. Requirements understanding as evidenced by the fidelity of the primary use cases. Credibility of the cost/schedule estimates, priorities, risks, and development process. Depth and breadth of any architectural prototype that was developed. Establishing a baseline by which to compare actual expenditures versus planned expenditures. If the project does not pass this milestone, called the Lifecycle Objective Milestone, it either can be cancelled or repeated after being redesigned to better meet the criteria.

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