The Rational Unified Process is a software development process that covers the entire software development lifecycle.
It is a process product that brings a wealth of knowledge, accumulated over 20 years from a vast range of sources, right to the practitioner's workstation in the form of an online electronic guide.
It embeds guidance on many modern techniques and approaches: object technology and component-based development, modeling and UML, architecture, iterative development, and so on.
It is an open process framework that software development organizations can configure and extend to suit their own needs.
It is not a frozen product; rather, it is alive , constantly maintained , and continuously evolving, with new process components made available online.
It is based on a solid process architecture, and that allows a development organization to configure and tailor it to suit its needs.
It supports key best practices for software development.
It is supported by an extensive palette of tools developed by IBM Rational.