What is OpenUP

OpenUP is a lightweight open source methodology akin to RUP. It’s intended to be an incremental approach with a structured lifecycle and high visibility for our customer.

How does OpenUP work

At a high level, OpenUP is split into 4 cyclical phases. Inception, elaboration, construction, and transition. The goal of these phases is to mitigate risk up front while delivering value to the customer in terms of requirements documents, design documents, shippable code, and a deployed product. These artifacts correlate to the end of each respective phase. Each phase is intended to last anywhere between a few weeks to a few months with construction taking up most of the time.

Within each phase, the team works in iterations to create a piece or phase of a deliverable. These iterations are marked by the completion of that piece and can last 1-2 weeks.

Within each phase, individuals are assigned short tasks of work called micro-increments. These items work towards the goal of the iteration and should be able to be completed within a few hours to a few days.

Why did we choose OpenUP

We chose OpenUP because of the amount of requirements available up front. It’s clear that the project will not drastically change over time. This allows us to spend less time having process ceremonies and more time giving value to the customer. Another factor in choosing OpenUP comes from the collaboration between the sponsor and team. Our sponsors are active and express willingness to participate above and beyond what is expected.

How do you assign roles

Roles are shared among all team members, however we will be assigning individuals to be responsible for the completion of an item. This allows us to have a team member give a final say if an item is complete. We’ll be using a rasci chart for monitoring overall roles. Micro-increments will be tagged with the responsible team member on our waffle board