RUP® is a Web-enabled software engineering process that enhances team productivity and delivers software best practices to all team members. [go to site

The activities of RUP are based around the idea of highly iterative development. After an initial planning phase, the software project enters a cycle of iterations, each of which results in an executable release. Each of the iterations contains distinct activities for planning, requirements specification, analysis and design, implementation, testing, and stakeholder evaluation. The advantage of iteration is that it allows the project team to identify and correct misunderstandings early on in the project, keep the stakeholders up to date with deliverables to help them gauge the progress of the project, and distribute the project’s workload more evenly over the course of the project.

An iterative, architecture-centric, software engineering process developed by IBM Rational by incorporating the software engineering best practices. It establishes four phases of development, each of which is organized into a number of separate iterations that must satisfy defined criteria before the next phase is undertaken. In the inception phase, developers define the scope of the project and its business case. In the elaboration phase, developers analyze the project's needs in greater detail and define its architectural foundation. In the construction phase, developers create the application design and source code, and in the transition phase, developers deliver the system to users.

a proprietary heavy-weight software development method sold by Rational Inc. that initially combined the methods of Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and Jim Rumbaugh.

This is a low-level process framework for software development that was defined by Rational Software. It is actually a hybrid of process framework and design framework because it includes elements of both process and methodology.