The Unified Process Inception Phase: Best Practices in Implementing the UP

by Scott W. Ambler, Larry Constantine

Is the Unified Process the be all and end all standard for developing object-oriented component-based software? This book is the first in a four volume series that presents a critical review of the Unified Process. The book series is composed of four volumes, one for the Inception phase, one for the Elaboration phase, one for the Construction phase, and a fourth one for the Transition and Production phases. Each book stands on its own, but for a complete picture of the entire software process you need to read all four volumes.

The Inception phase's goals are:

- To describe the initial requirements;

- To develop and justify the business case for the system;

- To determine the scope of your system;

- To identify the people, organizations, and external systems that will interact with your system;

- To develop an initial risk assessment, schedule, and estimate for your system;

- To develop an initial tailoring of the Unified Process to meet your exact needs

The volume also contains a lot of material about project planning and estimating.

Who Should Read This Book?

For the most part this book is geared towards senior object developers, project managers, information technology executives. Senior object developers will find that process patterns provide a framework for organizing their work and for increasing their productivity. Project managers will find this book an excellent reference for managing a large-scale development effort, and information technology executives will find it an excellent source of insight as to how to make long-term development successful.

Table of contents

Foreword
Preface

The Inception Phase
About This Series

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Unified Process
1.2 The Enhanced Lifecycle for the Unified Process
1.3 The Goals of the Inception Phase.
1.4 How Work Generally Proceeds During the Inception Phase
1.4.1 The Business Modeling Workflow
1.4.2 The Requirements Workflow
1.4.3 The Analysis and Design Workflow
1.4.4 The Implementation Workflow
1.4.5 The Deployment Workflow
1.4.6 The Test Workflow
1.4.7 The Configuration and Change Management Workflow
1.4.8 The Project Management Workflow
1.4.9 Environment Workflow
1.4.10 The Infrastructure Management Workflow
1.5 The Organization of this Book

Chapter 2: Best Practices for the Business Modeling Workflow
Introduction
2.1 The Articles
2.1.1 "How the UML Models Fit Together"
2.1.2 "Data−Based Design"
2.1.3 "Organizing Models the Right Way"
2.1.4 "Getting Started with Patterns"
2.1.5 "CRC Cards for Analysis"

Chapter 3: Best Practices for the Requirements Workflow
Introduction
3.1 Putting the Requirements Workflow into Perspective
3.2 Requirements Gathering Techniques
3.3 User Interfaces and Internationalization
3.4 Lessons from the Real World
3.5 The Articles.0
3.5.1 "Decoding Business Needs"
3.5.2 "Customer Rights and Responsibilities"
3.5.3 "Requirements Engineering Patterns"
3.5.4 "Don't Get Mad, Get JAD!"
3.5.5 "Capturing Business Rules"
3.5.6 "Learning the Laws of Usability"
3.5.7 "Your Passport to Proper Internationalization"
3.5.8 "Thirteen Steps to a Successful System Demo"
3.5.9 "Real Life Requirements"

Chapter 4: Best Practices for the Test Workflow
Introduction
4.1 Why Test?
4.2 Starting Testing Off on the Right Foot
4.3 Testing Techniques for the Inception Phase
4.4 The Articles3
4.4.1 "A Business Case for QA and Testing"
4.4.2 "Determining Your Project's Quality Priorities"
4.4.3 "Plan Your Testing"
4.4.4 "Reduce Development Costs with Use−Case Scenario Testing"
4.4.5 "The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Reviews"

Chapter 5: Best Practices for the Project Management Workflow
Introduction
5.1 Starting Out Right
5.2 Technical Project Management Activities
5.2.1 Justifying Your Project
5.2.2 Planning Your Project
5.2.3 Managing Project Risk
5.2.4 Managing Web−Based Projects in Web−Time
5.2.5 Outsourcing and Subcontractor Management
5.2.6 Managing Your Measurement Efforts
5.3 Soft Project Management Activities
5.4 A Few More Thoughts
5.5 The Articles
5.5.1 "Debunking Object−Oriented Myths"
5.5.2 "A Project Management Primer"
5.5.3 "Mission Possible"
5.5.4 "Creating a Project Plan"
5.5.5 "Know Your Enemy: Software Risk Management"
5.5.6 "Estimating Internet Development"
5.5.7 "Web Time Software Development"
5.5.8 "Managing Outsourced Projects"
5.5.9 "Selecting the Best Vendor"
5.5.10 "A Software Metrics Primer"
5.5.11 "Metrics: 10 Traps to Avoid"
5.5.12 "Don't Fence Me In"
5.5.13 "Software Measurement: What's In It for Me?"
5.5.14 "Habits of Productive Problem Solvers"
5.5.15 "From Engineer to Technical Lead"
5.5.16 "Effective Resource Management"
5.5.17 "What's Wrong with Software Development"
5.5.18 "Scaling Up Management"

Chapter 6: Best Practices for the Environment Workflow
Introduction
6.1 Selecting and Deploying the Right Tools
6.2 Deploying Your Software...

340 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

About the author

Scott W. Ambler is a Canadian software engineer, consultant and author, currently Senior Consulting Partner at Scott Ambler + Associates.

From Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion, this book has not dated well. After a first, introductory chapter on the inception phase of the Unified Process methodology, it devotes a some clumsy chapter to the supposed best practices of six of the phase's ten workflows i.e. the Business Modeling, workflow (1), Requirements (2), Analysis and Design (3), Implementation, Deployment, Test(4), Configuration and Change Management, Project Management (5), (Tools) Environment (6), and Infrastructure Management. The best practices are in general disappointing; the authors first provide a short description of 4 to 18 informal, basically management-focused articles from Software Development and Computer Language, followed by the full text of the articles. The book includes a total of 41 of these articles. Some are still interesting or contain some key information, insights or experiences but they also tend to be reiterate a lot of introductory material and include dated material. Sometimes the book's criteria for inclusion is not at all clear and seems to reflect the authors' subjective criteria on what they deemed interesting back in 2000, criteria which does not distinguish between essential and secundary material. For example the chapter on best practices for the Business Modeling Workflow skips over key business modeling processes and limits itself to including five poorly fitting articles, including one on how UML models “fit together”, one on data-based design (!), one very simple and basic article on patterns and one CRC cards for analysis (!!!). The chapter on requirements includes nine articles, some of which sound positively quaint in 2022. In spite of its age, I found the article on internationalization quite interesting as a warning to managers and tech leads who need to develop software with internationalization. Although there is little testing in the inception phase, the authors includes a chapter on the testing workflow for this phase, where they emphasize the need for requirements and use case reviews and inspections.

Chapter 5, on “best practices” for project management, includes a whopping 18 articles (which make up almost half of the 41 articles included in the book), focusing on software development risk identification and management, effort and time estimation, software development metrics, outsourcing, and vendor selection.

If you are all interested by the book, I would recommend you quickly read through its first chapter and skim over the 41 articles, pausing only to read at most ten of those whose titles most draw your attention, such as

1. "Your Passport to Proper Internationalization";
2. "The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Reviews";
3. "Know Your Enemy: Software Risk Management";
4. "Managing Outsourced Projects";
5. "Selecting the Best Vendor";
6. "A Software Metrics Primer";
7. "Metrics: 10 Traps to Avoid";
8. "Scaling Up Management";
9. "The Ten Commandments of Tool Selection";
10. "Lessons Learned from Tool Adoption"