Search in Book Reviews

The book starts with a quick overview of the RUP (the Rational Unified Process) and some of the Rational tools. It may be best to skip this chapter as it is mostly marketing material for Rational products. Chapter Two describes the philosophy of the RUP by stating the basic principles. They seem fairly sensible and cover most of the items lists in the Agile Manifesto. The RUP is then compared with a number of other software processes to explain how RUP can and is used. A number of example projects are the introduced ranging from a one man one week project to a large distributed project run over two continents. The one-man project is then expanded in the next chapter to very clearly illustrate all of the points raised so far.

Part Two of the book examines the life cycle of a RUP project in more detail. The four phases of a RUP project (inception, elaboration, construction and transition) area covered by separate chapters again using the example projects to aid comprehension.

Part Three is concerned with how to adopt the RUP within an organisation. This starts with a chapter on how to initially configure the RUP. As this chapter deals mainly with RUP software and tools, it was not that useful, as I do not have access to them. The next chapter (Chapter Eleven) is more useful and offers practical advice on how to actually adopt the process. All of the advice seems very sensible, adopt a little bit first, and perform a pilot project to evaluate what parts of RUP are required, all sensible stuff. Chapter Twelve deals with how to adopt an iterative project and is followed by a chapter of RUP anti-patterns.

The final part of the book offers a view on how RUP affects project managers, analysts, developers and testers; each role is the subject of a chapter. A good glossary (required for all the TLAs) and references then complete the book.

"The Rational Unified Process Made Easy" is subtitled as a practitioners guide and in essence that is exactly what it is. It offers a clear and concise introduction to the RUP and the toolset, augmented with good advice and examples. This book is suited to a developer/analyst or manager who will be using the RUP in the near future.