 IBM Rational Unified Process®, RUP®, is a comprehensive process framework that provides industry-tested practices for software and systems delivery and implementation and effective project management. It is one of many processes contained within the Rational Process Library which offers best practices guidance suited to your particular development or project need. IBM Rational Method Composer allows you to easily customize RUP to meet the unique needs of your project. It enables you to select and deploy only the process components you need, and then publish it through your intranet. The RUP process framework with IBM Rational Method Composer provides: - Processes based on the best practices adopted in thousands of projects worldwide. Avoid inventing everything from scratch and reuse processes that have been successful for other organizations.
- Capability patterns that allow project managers to rapidly add or remove reusable chunks of processes addressing common problems. Since no two projects are alike, project managers can rapidly modify the process to address specific project needs.
- Out-of-the-box delivery processes to provide the project manager with a quick starting point for planning and initiating a project. A delivery process will provide an initial project template, identify what type milestones to have in the project, what work products to deliver by each milestone, and what resources are needed for each phase.
RUP promotes iterative development and organizes the development of software and systems into four phases, each consisting of one or more executable iterations of the software at that stage of development | 
