8/6/07

RUP sample documents: Inception

Here are sample RUP documents I created for a training I gave:



The requirements set:

BOSBusinessCase.pdf

BOSVision.pdf

BOSGlossary.pdf

BOSUCOrderBizcochos.pdf

BOSUCRetrieveConsolidatedOrder.pdf


The management set:

BOSSoftwareDevelopmentPlan.pdf

BOSRiskList.pdf

The most important ones are the vision document and the use cases. One thing I really like about the vision document is the problem statement, defining clearly the problem to be solved by the system.

One important thing I see missing in many “processes” is an explicit focus on finding what the user needs (can be very different of what the user wants), clearly stating the problem to be solved helps a lot in that direction.

Also you need to have some alternatives identified. How many projects are started without a clear problem to solve? Sometimes they're successful, but you must be VERY lucky to pull this off.

Also the alternatives are important: developing good software is very difficult: sometimes, something like excel is good enough!

Basically, it boils down to clearly defining the problem and have the alternatives in mind instead of jumping blindly into a development project.

BTW, the problem statement is not exclusive of RUP, they're just requirements management good practices. Even is included in the IEEE 830 SRS standard.

5 comments:

Jorge Ubeda said...

Hi Gabriel
Added to del.icio.us with labels softwareengineering, rational, requirements, tutorials.

Unknown said...

Thanks!
I'm glad you found it interesting enough :-)
A small reminder to all (I'll expand it in a future post):
You DON'T need to fill every template that RUP provides.
You DON'T need to execute every activity that RUP describes.
You NEED to adapt the process to your project.

Anonymous said...

Gabriel,
The documents are good and clear but can you put the screen shots of how to put everything together in rational. like say maybe for one small use case and end up with documents printed from RUP itself. I have been struggling on putting all things together. I have done stuff sparsely here and there but finding it and to connect to each other.

Unknown said...

@Anonymous,
I wrote the documents directly in word, just opened the word template.
I don't know what you can do from RUP (I didn't kept track of the tools they provide). If you use Requisite Pro, you can link the requirements to an attribute database.

Anonymous said...

hello gabriel your documents are great, do you have any other example of vision document my english is sooo bad but y hope you understand me thanks ...