eXRUP: A Hybrid Software Development Model for Small to Medium Scale Projects

The conventional and agile software development process models are proposed and used nowadays in software industry to meet emergent requirements of the customers. Conventional software development models such as Waterfall, V model and RUP have been predominant in industry until mid 1990s, but these models are mainly focused on extensive planning, heavy documentation and team expertise which suit only to medium and large scale projects. The Rational Unified Process is one of the widely used conventional models. Agile process models got attention of the software industry in last decade due to limitations of conventional models such as slow adaptation to rapidly changing business requirements and they overcome problems of schedule and cost. Extreme Programming is one of the most useful agile methods that provide best engineering practices for a good quality product at small scale. XP follows the iterative and incremental approach, but its key focus is on programming, and reusability becomes arduous. In this paper, we present characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of RUP and XP process models, and propose a new hybrid software development model eXRUP (eXtreme Programming and Rational Unified Process), which integrates the strengths of RUP and XP while suppressing their weaknesses. The proposed process model is validated through a controlled case study.