Documentation in Rational Unified Process; SoDA

[Brent L Jones <bjones -at- VersatileSoftware -dot- com>]

Greetings, all.

Our company is evaluating the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and its
associated tools as a possible internal development process. Does anyone out
there have experience producing end-user docs in a Rational shop? From a
brief look (I received my evaluation software an hour ago), the RUP and
associated tools (especially SoDA, the reporting/documenting module) seem to
be geared toward internal documents, such as specs, design docs, etc. And
traditionally, CASE-generated documents have been of limited value WRT
end-user docs. I see little provision, either in the process itself or the
tools, for the tasks involved in producing end-user materials.

Am I correct in this initial estimate? I will, of course, find out more as I
spend more time evaluating the product, but I wanted to solicit feedback
from any of you that may have actually produced end-user stuff in a company
on the RUP bandwagon. What issues did you contend with? How did RUP make
your job easier? Harder? Are there any big showstoppers--that is, things
about the RUP that made doing your job extremely difficult?

Again, I'm interested in the end-user doc perspective. I'm somewhat familiar
w/ the debates about UML as a notation form, use cases as a
requirements-gathering device, etc. and think that debate about those might
be OT for this list.

Any help much appreciated. I'll summarize responses. Thanks in advance!

brent
--
Brent Jones, Documentation Manager
Versatile Software, Boulder CO
brent -dot- jones -at- versatilesoftware -dot- com