Foreword

Since that first day when the first software development team collaborated to deliver the first economically viable software-intensive system, there has been and continues to be a philosophical as well as a pragmatic battle over how best to organize a team and how to orchestrate its work. At one extreme are those who advocate high-ceremony processes involving rigidly defined artifacts and a strict ordering of activities; at the other extreme are those who embrace low-ceremony processes involving a fierce focus on coding, with everything else considered irrelevant or inconsequential. The pendulum has swung between these two extremes for years.

The good news is that, with decades of experience in delivering software-intensive systems behind us, it is now possible to identify what has worked for successful organizations and reject what is common among unsuccessful ones. This is the essence of the Unified Process, in both the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and its simpler open-source version, Open Unified Process (OpenUP): RUP and OpenUP are both simply elaborations of a small set of best practices that have proved themselves in practice.

In this book, Per and Bruce explain the six key principles that serve as the foundation of RUP and OpenUP. For each of these principles, the authors discuss the points of pain that each principle addresses, the context for that principle, and pragmatic advice on applying it. Since no single process can work in the same fashion for every conceivable combination of domain and development culture, the authors go on to describe how each of these principles can be adapted across the full spectrum of low- to high-ceremony use.

Per and Bruce are well suited to this task: both have engaged in a multitude of projects over the years, and both have been deeply involved in the formulation of RUP and OpenUP. I can think of no authors better qualified to bring you the essence of these processes.

Grady Booch

IBM Fellow