During recent years, a great deal of interest has emerged on the use of adaptive approaches and a posteriori estimates in finite element method. The results are intended to be used to improve the quality of finite element solution by changing the location of the nodes within a fixed number of degrees of freedom-so called r method-, and by increasing the order of polynomial approximation with the new degrees of freedom-p method. This paper deals with error analysis that contains the basic theory and method of deriving error estimates and adaptive processes applied to finite element solutions underlying the rpm method that is the combination of r and p method of finite element. It is shown that we can obtain more accurate solution by applying the method to the 2-dimensional heat transfer problem.