Tailoring and Introduction of the Rational Unified Process

RUP is a comprehensive software development process framework that has gained a lot of interest by the industry. One major challenge of taking RUP into use is to tailor it to specific needs and then to introduce it into a development organization. This study presents a review and a systematic assembly of existing studies on the tailoring and introduction of RUP. From a systematic search for study reports on this topic we found that most research is anecdotal and focus on the effects of RUP itself. Only a few number of studies address tailoring and introduction. We have found that tailoring RUP is a considerable challenge by itself and that it must be closely related to existing best practices. We see a tendency of turning from large complete process frameworks towards smaller and more light-weight processes which may impose a smoother transition from process model to process in use.