What About Process on a Small Project?


In general, as size and complexity grow, you need to establish more rules . You also need to make sure that people follow those rules to ensure that you all continue working toward the same goal. You need to communicate the goal, as well as other information, clearly and consistently to every member of your team. At some point, as a project grows past being a small project, oral communication is insufficient for much of the information you need to communicate. When we talk about "rules," we're really talking about instituting a process. The process itself can range from very informal to very formal, depending on the needs of the project.

Many small projects have successfully used a process. Because we work, or have worked, for Rational, we're most familiar with RUP and our customers who use RUP. Therefore we decided to use RUP on this project.

Gary once visited a customer where he found a five-person team using RUP on a pilot project. They were really excited about it then, and as it turned out, RUP helped them deliver a successful product. The project manager actually went on vacation during delivery week with absolutely no doubts about whether the delivery would go smoothly ”and the manager's confidence turned out to be well-founded. This is just one example of a small project that successfully used RUP.

Benefits of Using RUP on a Small Project

RUP can benefit small projects in several ways.

  • RUP provides guidelines about engineering best practices.

  • RUP helps you understand the activities, roles, and artifacts you may need on your project and when it's best to use each.

  • RUP provides detailed information that helps you effectively apply techniques to your project, if they're appropriate. For example, if you're creating a design model using the Unified Modeling Language (UML), RUP can tell you which diagrams are appropriate and give guidelines about how to structure the model. It can even help you use Rational tools effectively as part of the overall process.

  • RUP can help you tailor the process to address specific project issues, for example, in the area of requirements management.



Software Development for Small Teams. A RUP-Centric Approach
Software Development for Small Teams: A RUP-Centric Approach (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
ISBN: 0321199502
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 112

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