What is a unified process?

Unified process - A unified process may refer to any one of a family of iterative software development process frameworks. Unified processes have four phases: inception, elaboration, construction, and transition. Each phase comprises a number of timeboxed iterations, which in turn involve a cycle of specifying requirements, analysis, design, implementation, and testing, with emphases on these shifting as the project team proceeds through iterations. Each iteration results in an improved version of the system called an increment.