What Are the Disadvantages of the Rational Unified Process?
The main areas of disadvantage in the Rational Unified Process software development cycle include its complexity, the disorganized development and applicability only to large software development projects. Its reusability on cutting edge projects and the limitation in capturing sociological aspects are additional downsides.
The Rational Unified Process is an iterative software development lifecycle methodology that consists of four phases including the inception, elaboration, construction and transition. However, the Rational Unified Process model of approach is too complex. The team members need to be experts in the field and more resources are required when using this methodology to develop software. It also requires skilled resources for risk analysis.
The Rational Unified Process approach tends to lead to a totally unorganized form of software development. In addition, the unified process does not capture the sociological aspects of software development and does not provide the details to develop it incrementally. The reusability of components developed by this approach on cutting edge projects that use the latest technology is not possible.
In the iterative approach, system architecture and design issues can arise if the developer does not collect all the requirements in the beginning. The approach is not suitable for changing requirements or small projects. In addition, the end of the project cannot be defined, which is a major risk. The progress of the project is dependent largely on the risk analysis phase.