Roles and Activities

Rational Unified Process: Roles and Activities

A role is an abstract definition of a set of activities performed and artifacts owned.

Roles are typically realized by an individual, or a set of individuals, working together as a team.

A project team member typically fulfills many different roles.

Roles are not individuals; instead, they describe how individuals behave in the business and what responsibilities these individuals have.

While most roles are realized by people within the organization, people outside of the development organization play an important role: for example, that of the stakeholder of the project or product being developed.

A role, and its activities and artifacts

Roles have a set of cohesive activities that they perform. These activities are closely related and functionally coupled, and are best performed by the same individual.

Activities are closely related to artifacts. Artifacts provide the input and output for the activities, and the mechanism by which information is communicated between activities.

Role Sets