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Reviewer: Allan James Payne

This useful introduction to the Rational Unified Process is intended for project managers, analysts, and coders. Its two parts consist of 17 chapters, two appendices, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index. The preface directs readers to the parts of the book they will need, depending on their project roles. The first part, containing six chapters, introduces the basic concepts of the Rational Unified Process, emphasizing how it differs from other development strategies. In the second part, 11 chapters address different aspects of a software project. Chapters 1 and 2 develop the concepts related to the Rational Unified Process in the context of best practice. The process stresses iterative development, managed requirements, component-based architecture, visual modeling, verifiable quality, and controlled change. It is implemented as an online system, employing hyperlinks, graphical navigation, hierarchical tree browsers, indexing, and search engines. It supports object technology, components, modeling, UML, architecture, and iterative development. The process is configured to satisfy local requirements derived from the fully delivered system of tool mentors, guidelines, workers, and artifacts. Chapters 3 through 6 describe the concepts behind the process in more detail. The static structure (process description) is based on workers, activities, artifacts, and workflows. Additional elements that support the process are guidelines, templates, tool mentors, and conception. The dynamic structure (iterative development) is divided into inception, elaboration, construction, and transition phases; it allows iteration to control changing requirements and risks, which are balanced against organization and product. The architecture-centric process accentuates conceiving, constructing, managing, and evolving a system. The architecture is represented by multiple coordinated views, enabling the developer to focus on particular structures and elements of a system. The use case lists a set of actions within a system to produce an observable result on an actor (an object outside the system). The Rational Unified Process applies use case processes based on classes, scenarios, and domain models. Use cases express requirements in concise, simple prose supported by activity diagrams; they drive much of the method. Use cases are packaged in the same way as object classes and are connected by dialogues. Development of the use case model evolves through elaboration and packaging, by means of such operations as inclusion, extension, generalization, and specialization. Chapters 7 through 10 emphasize the management, requirements, and analysis and design processes. The project management workflow supports phased and iterative plans to control risk and to plan and monitor the project. In the Rational Unified Process, it balances competing objectives, manages risk, and overcomes constraints. It assesses tradeoffs between staff, schedule, and project scope for the various phases of a project, in order to choose the scope of the iterative plan. In the business modeling workflow, the Rational Unified Process uses software engineering techniques to document the structure and dynamics of a business so that all interested parties can understand the nature of the business process. This approach is a good basis for requirements capture and can be adapted to a particular project. The requirement process involves analysts evaluating the problem, eliciting user needs, defining the system, scoping the project, and maintaining later changes to artifacts. During the analysis and design process, logical views are developed for system elements, process and thread views, and deployment of the system onto its working nodes. These objects act as classes, subsystems, and packages later in the development. In chapters 11 and 12, the implementation and test workflow is defined. Implementation is based on the integration of evolutionary structural and behavioral prototypes. It uses the round-trip engineering technique to tie the design and implementation components together. The test workflow emphasizes the need to assess product quality in terms of interactions between components, integration, functionality, and performance. Chapters 13 through 16 cover some important modern concepts, namely configuration and change management, environment management, deployment, and iteration. The configuration and change management workflow maintains the integrity of artifacts as projects evolve over time and assesses the status and metrics of projects. Environment workflow is defined as the support of tools, processes, and methods. It is error-prone because there is so much human input, but it can be automated through support tools. The deployment workflow process handles all the artifacts that are delivered by the project and is tuned to the project requirements. The iteration workflow runs through the main workflow processes defined in previous chapters. Its effect depends on the phase of the project in which it occurs. Chapter 17 discusses the introduction of the Rational Unified Process. A Web site presents the Rational Unified Process as tailored to the pilot project. The book emphasizes the risk and cultural change associated with changing methodologies. Tools supporting the new methodology need to be instantly available, as does full training.