The unified software development process, or unified process, is one of several methods used to develop software and applications. It can be applied to projects as large as an operating system release or as small as a computer science course project, and its wide variety of uses is where the unified process derives its greatest utility. Description: A formal definition of the unified process is “…a use case-driven, architecture-centric, iterative, and incremental development process framework…” (Software Development Magazine, online). One thing to note is that, contrary to its name, the unified process is not strictly a process that must be followed. Instead, the unified process is a structure with steps that can be used to develop software, but which can be customized depending on the requirements of the project and the type of software to be developed. There are four main phases of the unified process: initiation, processing, construction and transition. However, the unified process places an emphasis on potential risk in the software, which is something that sets it apart from other models. An entire development phase, Processing, is partly about identifying potential problems with the software and developing solutions. This is done in order of severity, with the worst potential issues addressed early in the process. Another important aspect of the unified process is how it works as an iterative and incremental model. During each of the four phases of the unified process, successive iterations of the project software, called increments, are released (Wikipedia). Each version contains some new features or added functionality that slowly takes the system in its development. This allows each fe...... half of paper ......individual needs. The unified process is also ideal for large projects where individual components can be developed almost independently and over time assembled into a final version. I would recommend using the unified process for most software development, but if the project requires software where the individual use cases are not ideal for testing, then perhaps another method should be used. References: "Agile Unified Process (AUP) home page." Ambysoft home page. Network. 05 February 2011. "Understanding the unified process." Software Development Journal: Programming, Software Testing, Project Management, Agile, UML. Network. 05 February 2011. "Unified process". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Network. 05 February. 2011. .