8/25/99 - Jack Harich - Go Back
Pros
- Appears to be fairly mature, though a first release.
- Excellent conceptual grasp via Phase and Workflow Diagram.
- Widespread successful use.
- Well documented at the high level.
- Eliminates the problems inherent in a waterfall process.
- The leading industry accepted standard process lately. It's hot!
- A great source of material to learn from.
- Page 363 of SPM says this is a CMM level 3 process.
Cons
- Despite frequent use of "lifecycle" this process only covers the project portion.
- Not obvious how to adapt to small projects or less than CMM Level 3.
- Seems oriented towards large projects only.
- Literature on it is verbose, no summary, so hard to understand fast.
- Possibly distorted by Rational's desire to sell related tools.
- Way too big for most to swallow as a first formal process without a consultant.
- Few (?) good simple examples of artifacts. Most examples are advanced and imposing.
Several key abstractions are this process's greatest contributions. These are the conceptual phases versus the individual overlapping workflows, the multiple artifacts per workflow, the use of iterations in phases, and the easy use of milestones per iteration or phase.
The biggest problem is about 70% of all software organizations are at CMM Level 1, and so cannot adopt the Unified Process as defined without certain failure. The process must be stripped down to a far more digestable level, to what I would smile and call Level 1.5, so that success is certain. After initial success, more process features can be added. Unfortunately there are no suggestions on what to adopt for smaller projects or less than Level 3 organizations. We are currently developing a solution to this problem....