Unified Software Development Process (Paperback), The (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) - Softcover

Early sections introduce four basic principles of the unified process: that software should stress use cases (which show how it interacts with users), that the process is architecture-centric, and that it is iterative and incremental. The authors then apply these principles to their software process, which involves everything from gathering system requirements to analysis, design, implementation, and testing. The use-case examples are excellent and include concrete examples drawn from such areas as banking and inventory control.

The authors point out the connection between UML document types (like use cases, class diagrams, and state transition diagrams) with various models used throughout the software process. They provide very short, real-world examples that illustrate how their ideas have been successfully applied. The straightforward tour of the new unified software process gets extra elaboration--along with some advice--in later chapters that further describe the author's ideas on design. With the weight of these three expert authors behind it, readers can expect The Unified Software Development Process to be an important book and one that will be valuable to any working designer or manager. --Richard Dragan

This landmark book provides a thorough overview of the Unified Process for software development, with a practical focus on modeling using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The Unified Process goes beyond mere object-oriented analysis and design to spell out a proven family of techniques that supports the complete software development life cycle. The result is a component-based process that is use-case driven, architecture-centric, iterative, and incremental.

The Unified Process takes full advantage of the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language. This book demonstrates how the notation and process complement one another, using UML models to illustrate the new process in action. The authors clearly describe the semantics and notation of the different higher-level constructs used in the models. Constructs such as use cases, actors, subsystems, classes, interfaces, active classes, processes, threads, nodes, and most relations are described in the context of a model. Object technology practitioners and software engineers familiar with the authors' past work will appreciate The Unified Software Development Process as a useful means of learning the current best practices in software development.