CONFIGURING THE PROCESS

In general, there are two levels at which the software engineering process can be adapted or modified:

An organizationwide process, in which process engineers modify, improve, or tailor a common process to be used throughout the organization. This takes into consideration issues such as the domain of the application, reuse practices, and core technologies mastered by the company. One organization can have more than one organizationwide process, each adapted for a different type of development. In many cases the Rational Unified Process, as it is, "out of the box," will serve as the organizationwide process.
A project-specific process, in which process engineers take the organizationwide process and refine it for a given project. This level takes into consideration the size of the project, the reuse of company assets, the initial cycle ("greenfield development") versus the evolution cycle, and so on. The project-specific process is described in the Rational Unified Process as a development case.

In some cases, there is a need to modify the online version of the Rational Unified Process and thereby configure the process. After putting a baseline copy of the Rational Unified Process online under configuration management, process engineers modify it to incorporate changes such as the following:

Add, expand, modify, or remove steps in activities.
Add checkpoints to the review activities based on experience.
Add guidelines, based on discoveries made in past projects.
Add, expand, modify, or remove artifacts, activities or workers.
Tailor the templates: add company logo, header and footer, identification, and cover page.
Add tool mentors as needed.

Some changes, however, are harder than others:

Changes in process terminology that have a sweeping effect
Using a process model different from the one presented in Chapter 3 (It will be difficult to change underlying concepts such as worker, activity, artifact, and so on.)
Changing the core workflow structure

The amount of work to create the corresponding development case may be considerable, and the reconciliation with Rational's future releases of the Rational Unified Process may be more difficult.