A Comparison of RUP and XP
by John Smith, Rational Strategic Services Organization, International
Branch.
John Smith
has 33 years experience
in engineering, software development, and
management. He's worked for Rational Software for eight years, including two
years working with the Rational Unified Process
(RUP) development team in Vancouver, Canada. He's now with the International
branch of Rational's strategic Services Organization in Australia.
A
PDF
version
of this article is available, however, you must have Adobe
Acrobat installed to view it. You can download this and other RUP white papers
from the
RUP White Papers
.
Abstract
Labeling RUP as heavyweight and XP as lightweight without
further qualification does both a disservice by obscuring what each is and what
each was intended to do. And, when done in a pejorative way, it's simply
meaningless posturing. It is the implementations of these as processes that will
be either "heavyweight" or "lightweight", and they should be as heavy or
light as circumstances require them to be.
XP is not a free form, anything goes discipline-it focuses narrowly on a
particular aspect of software development and a way of delivering value, and is
quite prescriptive about the way this is to be achieved.
RUP's
coverage is much broader and just as deep, which explains its apparent
"size". However, at the micro level of process, RUP occasionally allows and
offers equally valid alternatives, where XP does not; for example, the practice
of pair programming, which is required by XP. This is not intended as a criticism of XP; simply an
illustration of how XP, as its name implies, has narrowed its focus.
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