Construction Phase - One of the phase of Rational Unified Process

There are 4 phases which together constitute the rational unified process namely:

1. Inception phase
2. Elaboration phase
3. Construction phase
4. Transition phase

For representing the process at a high level, it is necessary that all of the above mentioned four phases should work together just as it is done for the water fall styled model. But here the key difference is that the primary key to the process is nothing but the development iterations that are involved in each of the development phase. Each of the above mentioned phases is driven by the objective and ended by milestone. The RUP hump chart gives the visualization for all the above 4 phases. 

Here we shall talk about the third phase i.e., the construction phase. 

About Construction Phase of Rational Unified Process

- The construction phase is driven by the primary objective for building the software system or application. 

- The primary focus of the construction phase is taken up by the components development as well as the development of the other features of the software system or application. 

- A bulk of coding is carried out in this phase only. 

- For developing a large project, it is required that several construction iterations are carried out in order to make an effort for dividing the use cases in to the segments that are manageable and that can be used in the production of the demonstrable prototypes. 

- The software version that is released in this phase is its first external release.

- The elaboration phase is concluded with the initial operational capability milestone. 

- The major thing with which the construction phase is concerned is moving the executable architecture that was created in the elaboration phase to the operational system. 

- Therefore, a beta version of the software system or application is ready to be evaluated by the project team. 

- In the elaboration phase the software product resides on the architectural baseline.

- Here, it is moved to a system that is so complete enough that it can make transition to the end users’ community. 

- The architectural baseline is grown enough to become the completed operational system via the refining of the designing in to the code. 

- This phase acquires the largest part of the whole rational unified process. 

- The remaining part of the software system or application is built on the foundation that was laid earlier in the elaboration phase. 

- Short and time boxed iterations help towards the implementation of the features of the system where an executable release of the system or application is released at the end of each iteration. 

- In this phase, writing the full test use cases becomes customary where each one marks the beginning of a new iteration. 

- The elaboration phase makes use of certain UML (unified modelling language) diagrams which are mentioned below:

1. Activity
2. Sequence
3. Collaboration
4. State i.e., transition and
5.  Interaction overview diagrams

- The purpose of the rational unified process is to provide the industry tested practices for the development, implementation and delivery of the software system or application. 

- It also provides a comprehensive frame work for the effective project management. 

- This process is actually one of the many other processes which are contained within the rational process library of the IBM RMC (rational method composer). - This makes it easy to make selection and deploy the only components that you need for your process. 

- The rational unified process is adopted for 1000s of the projects nowadays worldwide. 

- It lessens the burden of inventing a new thing again and again rather it focuses on re-usability.