<pre>
Author/s : Gary Pollice, Liz Augustine, Chris Lowe, Jas Madhur
Publisher : Addison-Wesley
Category : Project management, Process and Best Practices
Review by : Lasse Koskela
Rating : 7 horseshoes</pre>
This is what I call a "nightstand book". It's very readable and won't overload your gray brain cells while still stimulating you to analyze your conceptions of the real world you're faced with at work. It's a story about a voluntary software project implemented by the authors on their free time and provides a nice overview of how RUP can be applied to a small project, mixed in with certain ingredients from agile processes such as XP.
The focus of the book is to document what decisions and obstacles the four-member team encountered during the 6 months they spent on the project. The story is very entertaining and I read the book (almost) cover to cover in just 4 days. I found the tips and guidelines splattered around the book to be mostly common sense, but I did make some notes regarding what to do at work a.s.a.p. That's always a sign that the book you're reading was worth reading.
One thing that annoyed me though was the constant praise of the Rational product line knowing that all four authors worked for Rational Software during the project. Also, there were a couple of chapters dedicated for showing little islands of the implementation (code snippets etc.) of which value I frankly didn't see.
In summary, I'd classify this book as a good buy. Not great, but good. No big revelations, but a nice bunch of thought-provokers here and there.
More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk [ January 27, 2004: Message edited by: Book Review Team ]
