Table of Contents
| Ch. 1 | Leveraging key development principles | 1 |
| Ch. 2 | Demonstrate value iteratively | 25 |
| Ch. 3 | Focus continuously on quality | 91 |
| Ch. 4 | Balance stakeholder priorities | 151 |
| Ch. 5 | Collaborate across teams | 213 |
| Ch. 6 | Elevate the level of abstraction | 259 |
| Ch. 7 | Adapt the process | 313 |
| Ch. 8 | Making practical use of the best practices | 345 |
| App. A | The eclipse process framework (EPF) | 361 |
| App. B | IBM rational method composer (RMC) | 379 |
Read an Excerpt
The goal of this book is to describe a set of well-defined practices that you and your team can start adopting today. You can choose to adopt only one practice or adopt all of them over a period of time. The practices in this book have been shown to improve the quality, predictability, speed, and/or cost of software development. Why We Wrote This Book
During more than a decade of assisting companies in improving their software development practices and leading the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), we have had the opportunity to see what works and what doesn't. We have seen the rewards of successful adoption of RUP, and we have seen the challenges that projects and team members may encounter along the way. Over the last few years, we have also learned a lot from the agile movement, with its increased focus on people and low-ceremony approaches to software development. More recently, we have also been key drivers of an open source project, the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF), which includes the Open Unified Process (OpenUP)—an open-source version of the Unified Process. One of the objectives of EPF is to create a repository of industry practices, which are customizable and can be assembled into a set of out-of-the-box processes reflecting different development styles. Through all of this work, we have gained valuable experiences in what works and what doesn't, as well as how to package that knowledge into pragmatic practices that can be easily adopted.
We have found that many companies view improving their software development capabilities as a staggering task. It seems to be like eating an elephant: where do you start, and how do you go aboutit? The answer? You pick a tender spot and take one bite at a time. The "tender spot" is where you have the most pain; the "one bite at a time" is one or two practices, one or two software disciplines, and/or one or two tools. In other words, take "good bites." You don't want to choke on them. You want to be just a little bit hungry for the next bite.
This book describes a number of "good bites" that will allow you to start improving your software development capabilities today. You can take one bite or a larger number of bites, all based on your appetite.
We want to reduce the initial anxiety and cost associated with taking on a software improvement effort by providing an easy and unintrusive path toward improved results, without overwhelming you and your team. At the same time we want to show early results that keep the momentum going, thus maintaining the interest and commitment of everyone involved.
The practices in this book are written independently of any one specific process. Taken together, however, they do cover many key aspects of RUP and OpenUP. We believe that this book will be an asset for projects and companies interested in adopting some or all of RUP or OpenUP. Each of the practices described in this book distills knowledge from RUP, OpenUP, and other sources to provide pragmatic guidance on how to solve a particular software development problem. They help you in your software improvement effort by attacking one problem at a time. Each practice describes how OpenUP and RUP can help you adopt the practice and also references other methods such as eXtreme Programming (XP)1 and Scrum,2 so that you can understand differences and similarities in relation to other methods. This book can also be valuable for projects and companies with no interest in RUP or OpenUP. You can simply take any number of the practices in this book and adopt them on their own. What Will You Learn from This Book?
This book will familiarize you with the following:
- A number of key principles for software development, which have been validated by thousands of successful software projects of different sizes in a variety of industries.
- A number of concrete practices that you and your team can adopt today that support the key principles. Each of the practices described provides information on the following categories:
- - The problem the practice addresses
- - How you practically go about adopting the practice
- - Related practices
- - Where to read more about the practice
- - How to incrementally adopt practices with minimal risk, and how to leverage RUP and OpenUP
Who Should Read This Book? This book is aimed specifically at the following readers:
- All members of a software development team who would like to learn some practices that can be applied today.
- Team members who would like to learn RUP or OpenUP, one practice at a time. This book does not give you an understanding of the complete RUP or OpenUP, but if you have understood the practices described in this book, you have come a long way in learning about RUP and OpenUP.
- Managers, process engineers, and others who want to understand how key practices can be adopted in their organization, one practice at a time.
Structure and Content of This Book The book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of six key principles for software development that are used as a base for the structure of this book. Chapter 1 also provides an overview of RUP, OpenUP, XP, and Scrum.
Chapters 2 through 7 review each of the six key principles in turn. For each principle, we describe a number of practices that support it. Most practices can be adopted individually, allowing you to understand how to make quick improvements in your development without having to implement too much change. Chapter 8 describes how to adopt and benefit from these practices. How to Read This Book
This book can be read using any of three approaches:
1. Read only the parts that make sense for your team. Start by reading Chapter 1. Determine which key principle you think would add the most value to you and your team. Go to the corresponding chapter. Look through the practices listed for that chapter, and read those you find of most interest. Does the problem addressed by each practice coincide with a problem you are facing, and is it worth fixing? If so, share those with your team members and get agreement to adopt the ones that pertain to your situation.
Once you have adopted the identified practices, use the same approach to identify the next set of practices to read up on. This approach is described in more detail in Chapter 8.
2. Read the parts that are relevant for your role. Note that since software development is a team effort, it is good to be at least somewhat familiar with practices for other roles. The list below identifies the chapters and practices that probably are the most applicable for each of the roles on a software team.
- Project Manager: read Chapters 1 and 8 and Practices 1-4, 7- 10, 12-13, and 19-20.
- Architect: read Chapter 1 and Practices 1, 2, 10-11, 15-18, and 20.
- Analyst: read Chapter 1 and Practices 1-2, 7-10, 12, and 20.
- Developer: read Chapter 1 and Practices 1-2, 5-9, 11-12, 14-18, and 20.
- Tester: read Chapter 1 and Practices 1-2, 4-9, 12, and 20.
3. Read the book from start to finish to learn as much as possible about practices applicable for all members on your team. For More Information
To learn more about or to download EPF and OpenUP, go to the Eclipse Foundation Web site at www.eclipse.org/epf/.
RUP is delivered through the product IBM Rational Method Composer (RMC). Additional information about RUP or RMC, including a data sheet and a product demo, can be obtained from IBM at http:// www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rmc/.
Information about the Rational Software Global User Group Community can be found at http://www.rational-ug.org/index.php.
Academic institutions can contact IBM for information on a special program for including RUP in a software engineering curriculum at http://www.ibm.com/university/.
1 See Beck 2004.
2 See Schwaber 2002.
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