This book defines the Enterprise Unified ProcessTM (EUP), which was first introduced by myself in 1999 and later enhanced to support a wider variety of clients. The EUP is an extension to the industry standard IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP). Both the EUP and RUP are instantiations of the Unified Process (UP). The UP, also known as the Unified Method or the Unified Software Development Process (USDP), was originally a framework from which system processes were to be instantiated. A system process defines the roles that people fulfill, the activities that they perform, and the artifacts that they create to develop, operate, and support one or more computer systems. Over the years the primary focus of IBM Rational has been evolving the RUP. Whereas the RUP defines a software development lifecycle, the EUP extends it to cover the entire information technology (IT) lifecycle. The EUP extends the RUP to include the operation and support of a system after it is in production and its eventual retirement. Furthermore, because all but the smallest organizations have more than one system, the EUP also handles cross-system enterprise issues such as portfolio management, enterprise architecture, and strategic reuse. Although the RUP defines a very good software development lifecycle, it is only a start: you need the EUP to address the entire IT lifecycle and to provide a mechanism for true IT governance of RUP projects.
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