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EUP Disciplines
The iterative nature of the EUP is reflected in how you approach its disciplines, which are logical groupings of activities that take place over the lifetime of a project. During a Construction iteration, for example, the portion of the requirements selected for that iteration are analyzed, designed, coded, tested, and integrated with the products from earlier iterations. As new or changed requirements are identified throughout a project, they are prioritized and then incorporated into the current effort, put off for later efforts, or rejected.
The EUP disciplines are organized into three categories:
- Development. The development disciplines encapsulate the technical activities required to build a system (see Table 1).
- Support. As the name implies, the support disciplines encapsulate activities that support project teams (see Table 2).
- Enterprise management. The enterprise management disciplines address cross-system activities (see Table 3).
The first two categories are adopted from the original version of the RUP released in 1999.
Table 1 Development Disciplines
|
Discipline |
Goal |
|
Business Modeling |
Understanding the business of the organization, usually confined to the scope of the business that is relevant to the system being developed. |
|
Requirements |
Eliciting, documenting, and agreeing upon the scope of what is and is not to be built. This information is used by analysts, designers, and programmers to build the system; by testers to verify the system; and by the project manager to plan and manage the project. |
|
Analysis " Design |
Analyzing the requirements for the system and designing a solution to be implemented, taking into consideration the requirements, constraints, and all applicable standards and guidelines. |
|
Implementation |
Transforming the design into executable code and performing a basic level of testing—in particular, unit testing. |
|
Test |
Performing an objective evaluation to ensure quality. This discipline includes finding defects, validating that the system works as designed, and verifying that the requirements are met. |
|
Deployment |
Planning for the delivery of the system and executing the plan to make the system available to end users. |
Table 2 Support Disciplines
|
Discipline |
Goal |
|
Configuration and Change Management |
Managing access to the project artifacts. This discipline includes not only tracking artifact versions over time but controlling and managing changes to them. |
|
Project Management |
Directing the activities that take place on the project. This discipline includes managing risks, directing people (assigning tasks, tracking progress, and so on), and coordinating with people and systems outside the scope of the project, to be sure that it is delivered on time and within budget. |
|
Environment |
Supporting the rest of the effort by ensuring that the proper process, guidance (standards and guidelines), and tools (hardware, software, and so forth) are available for the team as needed. |
|
Operations " Support |
Operating and supporting production systems. Operations activities include monitoring and tuning systems, upgrading hardware, and archiving data. Support activities include responding to user requests, escalating serious problems, recording suggested fixes and improvements to existing systems, and recovering from disasters. The EUP adopts much of the advice provided by the ITIL guidelines. [8] |
Table 3 Enterprise Management Disciplines
|
Discipline |
Goal |
|
Enterprise Business Modeling |
Exploring the business structure and processes of the enterprise. This discipline provides a common understanding of the business activities, customers, and suppliers of the business. Enterprise business modeling helps to identify problems and areas that are candidates for automation. |
|
Portfolio Management |
Enabling you to track and plan your organization’s entire software portfolio as well as individual programs within your overall portfolio. Doing so allows you to schedule and implement new requirements in a more strategic fashion. This discipline also helps to avoid implementing the same functionality within different applications. |
|
Enterprise Architecture |
Addressing the overall architecture issues associated with your organization. This activity consists of models that define it, prototypes and working models that demonstrate how it works, and frameworks that make it easier to use. This discipline helps to ensure consistency across systems and greatly facilitates application architecture efforts. The EUP extends the Zachman Framework [9] to enhance the RUP’s approach to architecture. |
|
Strategic Reuse |
Promoting development and reuse of assets across projects, the goal of which is to enable you to develop higher-quality applications more quickly by reusing assets instead of developing them anew each time. This discipline also helps improve quality, as it allows you to use artifacts that have already been tested and proven to work. |
|
People Management |
Managing your staff and mediating the interactions between them and other people. This discipline describes the process of organizing, monitoring, coaching, and motivating people in a manner to ensure that they work well together and successfully contribute to projects within the organization. |
|
Enterprise Administration |
Organizing and administering data, network, hardware, software tools, and facilities that are key infrastructure components of your IT organization. |
|
Software Process Improvement |
Managing, improving, and supporting the multiple processes in use across your organization. Remember, one process does not fit all. |
New enterprise management disciplines come at a cost. Any attempts at implementing them should be applied judiciously and with minimal interruption to your current business functions. These new disciplines can provide significant savings in the long run by streamlining the way that your IT department operates—if you choose to implement them in a non-bureaucratic manner.