The reality of software development is that there is nothing which could be general enough to be applied to all situations. Those are the exact foundations on which lay the main ideas of the Rational Unified Process. RUP is, namely, a process framework which enables the creation of custom made methodology for different projects, based on the well-tried best practices for software development. Deployment of a consistent process elevates the understanding and efficiency of development teams and particularly gives a clearer definition of responsibility. RUP development methodology is rapidly becoming an industry standard among software development processes.
IBM Rational Method Composer is a new version of Rational Unified Process artefacts and it represents a huge step in the evolution of RUP because it is through him that the IBM solutions for process creation, portfolio management, distributed development and service oriented architecture are being displayed. In this way the customer is allowed, alongside everything else he normally received through RUP and its add-ons, to have a complete control over production of his own process or over documentation of already existing one which need not be connected to RUP.
The tool contains ready made processes and guidelines for small, medium sized and big projects, SOA, system engineering and portfolio management. Conception of the process which precisely corresponds to the requirements of the organization in which it is employed and which when concerning its projects enables a much better communication among the team as well as the possibility of placing the focus on the most important development areas, which in turn leads to better integration and harmonization of the business and IT teams. One can also create project plan templates which can be introduced into portfolio management tools such as IBM Rational Portfolio Manager or project planning tools such as Microsoft Project.
Within the tool there are also processes specific for certain types of technologies (RUP for J2EE, RUP for .NET, RUP for Rational Application Developer (RAD), RUP for User Experience and others) as well as the processes on the enterprise level (RUP for SOA Governance, RUP for Program Management, IBM Rational Portfolio Management).
