Foreword


This book is not a textbook on RUP, on agile processes, or on project management ”it is a journal from the trenches. It captures the realities of working with a small, distributed team that went through many changes, but managed to complete its mandate : deliver a valuable , working software product to the customer. In it, the combatants tell their story in a direct manner, without any attempt to "spin doctor" it.

I often hear, "We do not need a process, our project is small and simple." You may have this impression , but in the end, you will use some process, and most likely that process will be invented on the fly. There is a pervasive impression in our industry that a described process is only good for large companies, running large projects, with hundreds of developers ”and then it is only used to make developers' lives miserable. In this book, you will see how a very small group of people, tackling a modest project, can adopt and tailor a described process for their purpose: the Rational Unified Process. They did not add a lot of formality in this adoption. They only selected the elements that would help them, and even complemented RUP with practices from other approaches, such as PSP, eXtreme Programming, and other agile methods .

I also often hear, "Show me how you actually do it." Examples of successful ”and sometimes unsuccessful ”projects are often key to getting started with a new process. Just diving into a book or a complex Web site and wading through pages of descriptions of an ideal way to proceed is too abstract for most of us. Canned, perfect examples that exactly match the theory are not convincing. The great value of this book is that it brings the reader in contact with the reality of an actual project, including its failures, false starts, and limitations, with the authors looking critically at what they did and why it worked or did not. We learn from our experience, and from contrasting our experience with that of others. "Oh, yes, I recognize this pattern; I've been there too. Ah, this is how you worked through it."

This book discusses topics that are not often covered by traditional processes, RUP included. The authors boldly dive into issues dealing with people , with the dynamics of forming a team, with communications in a distributed environment, with the use of a collaborative, Internet-based tool, all elements that are an integral part of many small open source projects today.

Finally, this book emphasizes one key practice, often announced in the plan, and often forgotten in the rush to finish: self-reflection , sometimes called "post-mortem" or "retrospective." It means stopping for a while, stepping back, and looking at what we did, how we did it, what worked, what did not work, and why. And this whole book is one fantastic example of a very complete post-mortem, done with great candor and humility . This book will not replace all the post-mortems and retrospectives you did not do, but it will give you an idea of what you may have missed.

So, who would use this book and when? Many possibilities: If you are new to modern processes, RUP, agile methods, PSP, and so on, this book will give you the spirit of them, without diving into the details. If you are unsure about the way to handle a small, distributed project, you will learn valuable lessons from a group of people who have asked themselves the same questions you might have asked, who have made choices, right or wrong, and reflected on those choices. Hopefully, you will recognize some patterns, learn from the answers and solutions; this will mean that you make fewer mistakes on your own projects. If you are an expert at these methods, this book will open new avenues ” marrying various approaches, scaling down a process, and the value of self-reflection.

I learned a lot about RUP in this book, and came to look at it differently. Thank you Gary, Jas, Liz, and Chris for sharing this experience with us.

Philippe  Kruchten
Vancouver,  British  Columbia
Canada



Software Development for Small Teams. A RUP-Centric Approach
Software Development for Small Teams: A RUP-Centric Approach (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
ISBN: 0321199502
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 112

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