2.9. Further Readings

A very readable introduction to the UP and its refinement in the RUP is The Rational Unified Process—An Introduction by Philippe Kruchten, the lead architect of the RUP.

A description of the original UP can be found in The Unified Software Development Process by Jacobson, Booch, and Rumbaugh. It is worth study, but Kruchten's introduction is recommended first, as it is smaller and more succinct, and the RUP updates and refines the original UP.

Rational Software sells the online Web-based RUP documentation product, which provides comprehensive reading on RUP artifacts and activities, and templates for most artifacts. See Chapter 37 for a brief discussion. An organization can run a UP project just using mentors and books as learning resources, but some find the RUP product a useful learning and process aid.

UP activities are also loosely described in a series of books edited by Ambler and Constantine (for example, The Unified Process: Elaboration Phase [Ambler00]). These books contain reprints of articles published over the years in Software Development magazine, categorized into their respective phase and activity in terms of a UP taxonomy. Note that the articles were not originally written for the UP, although they definitely contain useful advice. Also note one slight error in the series: They describe the UP elaboration phase as a phase in which throw-away prototypes are created, thus reducing the need for attention to care in the programming or design. This is not accurate; production-quality (albeit partial) designs and code are created during elaboration. Ambler recognizes the inaccuracy and may correct it in a subsequent edition.^[6]

^[6] Ambler, private communication.

For other agile methods, the Extreme Programming (XP) series of books [Beck00, BF00, JAH00] are recommended, such as Extreme Programming Explained. Some XP practices are mentioned in later chapters. Most XP practices (such as test-first programming and iterative development) are compatible—or identical—with UP practices, and I encourage their adoption on a UP project. Note that the XP did not (nor did it claim to) invent short timeboxed iterative and adaptive development, which has been a practice in the UP and other iterative methods for years. Two noteworthy differences—this is not a complete list—between the UP and XP are: 1) The UP recommends incrementally writing use cases and a non-functional requirements document (XP does not); and, 2) The UP recommends more visual design diagramming (such as a half-day or day) near the start of an iteration, before major programming. The XP leaders recommend very little, such as 30 minutes.

Highsmith provides justification for the value of adaptive development in Adaptive Software Development [Highsmith00].