I totally agree that it was taken over by zombies, and also agree it had some good ideas.
But I don't think it was quite as incremental and iterative as all that. One, it was more a "process framework" than an actual process, so iteration length could be whatever the grand poobahs wanted. They were entirely fine with multi-month iterations. Two, as the "RUP hump" chart shows, it was always pretty waterfall-ish. And three, whatever the words in the book, the RUP adopters were generally large-company shops, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
I definitely remember the RUP people coming to the early Agile conferences and being very suspicious of our wild ways. So I'm not sure even its originators would have called it an Agile process.
But I don't think it was quite as incremental and iterative as all that. One, it was more a "process framework" than an actual process, so iteration length could be whatever the grand poobahs wanted. They were entirely fine with multi-month iterations. Two, as the "RUP hump" chart shows, it was always pretty waterfall-ish. And three, whatever the words in the book, the RUP adopters were generally large-company shops, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
I definitely remember the RUP people coming to the early Agile conferences and being very suspicious of our wild ways. So I'm not sure even its originators would have called it an Agile process.