Review By: Vivek Vaishampayan
07/12/2004People familiar with RUP know that it’s complex and sometimes a difficult process to implement. This book serves as a good companion, a knowledgeable tour guide, and an excellent reference that helps one get started in the journey of implementing RUP. The authors tackle the hefty subject matter head-on and in a straightforward manner. The result is an excellent reference book best meant for RUP mentors, project managers, project team members, QA professionals, and for process and method engineers who want to adopt RUP in their next project.

RUP adoption and implementation are treated as two different aspects in the book. The authors mainly focus on adoption and explain the process in a very systematic way, while also raising important issues concerning approach, urgency, and the scope of the project. The statistical data used is an eye-opener: "It takes two to three years to fully implement RUP in an organization with 100 to 200 developers." Tips and tricks are suggested throughout the book, which are very useful and practical.

The topics on project assessment, documenting the process, motivating people, making the RUP adoption plan, obtaining support within the organization, and successful RUP mentoring are very well presented and nicely organized. The descriptions of two case studies about Volvo Information System and the tactical RUP environment built by Covansys’ RUP web are very impressive and encouraging.

The authors have shared their best practices and proven strategies in this concise book based upon their real-life experiences. Overall, the authors have done an excellent job of writing about an extremely complex subject in an easy-to-understand style.

All project managers, team leaders, testers, architects, quality analysts and project team members will benefit by reading this book before starting on any RUP-based project. I strongly recommend that RUP mentors request project team members to read this book.