OPF Glossary - R

Rational Unified Process (RUP)
a proprietary heavy-weight software development method sold by Rational Inc. that initially combined the methods of Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and Jim Rumbaugh.
receiver
a network connectivity device that receives signals via electromagnetic radiation.
Note that receivers may receive infrared light, microwave radiation, or radio waves.
refactoring
iterating software to improve its understandability and maintainability without modifying its functionality.
regression test
a testing technique consisting of the repetition of a test after the work product under test has been iterated. Regression testing is used to identify any defects were inadvertently introduced (i.e., to determine if the work product has regressed) since the previous test.
Note: the iterative and incremental nature of the object-oriented development cycle greatly increases the frequency of regression testing and therefore increases the need to automate regression testing.
relationship management
the management task during which the relationships among the organizations is managed.
relationship strategy
the architecture work product produced during business engineering that documents the customer organization's strategy for forming business relationships.
release
a build that results in a version of the application being delivered by the development organization to the customer organization.
Contrast with internal build.
release notes
the deployment work product that document information describing a newly released version of the application.
release plan (RP)
the management work product that documents a project's schedule for phases, major milestones, and releases to the customer organization.
reliability
(1) a user-oriented quality requirement specifying the the maximum frequency of system failure, typically measured as the:
(2) a quantitative quality factor measuring the actual frequency of system failure.
Contrast with operational availability and robustness.
requirement
any mandatory, externally-observable, and validatable (e.g., testable) behavior, datum, characteristic, or interface of a business enterprise, application, application domain, framework, or component.
Contrast with architecture and design.
See also design constraint, external API requirement, informational requirement, operational requirement, and quality requirement.
requirements analysis
the requirements engineering task during which elicited requirements are studied, analyzed, modeled, and refined in order to ensure that they are complete, consistent, understandable, etc. when specified.
requirements engineer
the role that is played when a person performs requirements engineering tasks.
requirements engineering
the activity involved with all aspects of requirements.
requirements evaluation
the requirements engineering task during which requirements as analyzed and specified are evaluated to ensure that they are correct, complete, and consistent:
requirements executive summary (RES)
the requirements work product that summarizes the system requirements for an application.
requirements identification
the requirements engineering task during which raw unanalyzed requirements are identified.
requirements inspection team
the team that inspects the deliverable work products in the requirements work product set.
requirements management
the requirements engineering task during which requirements are baselined, placed under configuration control, and maintained during subsequent iteration.
requirements prototype
a prototype that is used to support the performance of the requirements engineering tasks.
requirements reuse
the requirements engineering task during which reusable requirements are identified in the reuse repository and reused (possibly with modification) on a specific project.
requirements set
the set of all work products that are produced during the requirements engineering activity.
Contrast with architecture set, configuration management set, deployment set, design set, implementation set, management set, process set, requirements set, and test set.
requirements specification
1) the requirements engineering task during which requirements are specified in requirements specifications and related documents are produced.
2) a work product that formally specifies the requirements of all (or part of) an application.
requirements team
the team that performs requirements engineering on an endeavor and thereby produces the associated requirements set of work products.
requirements trace
the mapping of requirements between work products at two different levels of abstraction, in order to ensure that all requirements have been handled. For example, the tracing of goals in the Application Vision Statement to requirements in the System Requirements Specification.
resource management
the project management task that ensures that adequate resources are allocated to the endeavor.
response time
(1) a user-oriented performance quality requirement specifying the maximum time that an application or component is allowed to take to initially respond to specific requests (e.g., the maximum time permitted from a user query to the time of the initial system response of displaying an hourglass icon so that the user does not have to wait with no feedback while the system retrieves the required information from multiple legacy databases, properly analyzes and formats it, and displays the final result on the user interface).
(2) a quantitative quality factor measuring the maximum time that an application or component actually takes to initially respond to specific requests.
Contrast with capacity, latency, and throughput.
responsibility
an informal requirement associated with some thing (e.g., an object, class, type, interface, component, package, external).
Responsibility Driven Design (RDD)
a software development method from the Smalltalk community that emphasizes responsibilities and collaboration over data.
retirement
the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to remove (i.e., retire) something from service.
retirement phase
the final phase, during which either the customer organization goes out of business (business engineering) or an application is declared to be obsolete (application engineering), is retired from service, and its capabilities are either eliminated or transfered to other applications.
retirement plan
the retirement set work product that formally documents the full set of procedures necessary to end the operation of an application in a planned, orderly manner and to ensure that its software, hardware, and data components are properly archived or incorporated into other applications.
retirement team
the team that performs the retirements tasks.
reusability
(1) a developer-oriented quality requirement specifying:
(2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which a work product is actually usable for purposes other than originally intended, typically measured in terms of either the number of times it has been reused or else the amount of additional effort required to make it “reusable” (e.g., by generalizing it, properly documenting it, and properly testing it).
reuse center
an implementation work product consisting of a business facility housing the reuse environment that is used by the reuse team to support the reuse engineering activity.
reuse center manager
the role that is played when a person performs management tasks for a reuse center.
reuse engineer
the role that is played when a person intentionally engineers work products to be reusable.
reuse engineering
the activity consisting of cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to ensure that an optimal supply of high-quality work products are available within the development organization for reuse on projects.
reuse environment
the complete integrated set of hardware and associated software tools that is used to store reusable work products (e.g., documents, software).
Contrast with development environment, integration environment, production environment, and test environment.
reuse librarian
the role that is played when a person technically leads the reuse team.
reuse organization
an organization that maintains a reuse repository for use by other organizations.
reuse strategy
the architecture work product produced during business engineering that documents the customer organization's strategy for internal reuse.
reuse team
the team that supports reuse on an endeavor.
review
a formal verification and validation technique during which a baseline is presented to members of the project management team and the customer organization in order to inform them about the current status of the application, solicit feedback, and seek approval.
Contrast with audit, inspection, and walkthrough.
ring network
a network in which each computer is connected to the next with the last computer connected to the first.
Contrast with bus network, mesh network, and star network.
risk
the non-trivial probability that an undesirable event will occur.
risk analysis
the ongoing risk management task of analyzing the significant risks to the success of an endeavor.
risk avoidance
the ongoing risk management task involving steps to take that help ensure that risks will not occur.
Contrast with risk mitigation.
risk documentation
the ongoing risk management involving the documentation of risks and the tasks to be performed to manage them.
risk factors
the factors contributing to the risk associated with a single use case path.
See also criticality, defect probability, frequency, and volatility.
risk identification
the ongoing risk management task of identifying the risks associated with an endeavor.
risk management
a ongoing management activity during which project risks are identified, analyzed, monitored, and risk avoidance and mitigation tasks are identified and documented.
risk management plan (RMP)
the management work product that documents a project's plans for performing risk management including risk avoidance and risk mitigation.
risk mitigation
the ongoing risk management task of dealing with undesireable events once they occur when the associated risk could not be avoided.
Contrast with risk avoidance.
risk monitoring
the ongoing risk management task of monitoring the success and status of the risk management tasks.
robustness
(1) a user-oriented quality requirement specifying the degree to which an application shall continue to function properly under abnormal circumstances.
(2) a quantitative quality factor measuring the actual degree to which an application continues to properly function under abnormal circumstances.
For example, robustness includes the proper handling (e.g., failover, degraded modes of operation, and disaster recovery) of:
Contrast with operational availability and reliability.
robustness testing
the testing that attempts to cause failures involving how the system behaves under invalid conditions (e.g., unavailablility of dependent applications, hardware failure, and invalid input such as entry of more than the maximum amount of data in a field).
Contrast with stress testing
role
a producer that models a part that is played by (i.e., a cohesive collection of responsibilities of) one or more persons on an endeavor.
role description
a description of a role including definition, responsibilities, and required expertise and training.
router
a network connectivity device that connects two networks (e.g., the Internet and a LAN) that use the same protocols.
For example a router might route client browser communication from the Internet to multiple web servers, thereby performing load balancing and ensuring reliability.