Where to Find Out More

Books on software process have always been common, and the rise of agile software development has led to many new books. Overall, my favorite book on process in general is [McConnell]. He gives a broad and practical coverage of many of the issues involved in software development and a long list of useful practices.

From the agile community, [Cockburn, agile] and [Highsmith] provide a good overview. For a lot of good advice about applying the UML in an agile way, see [Ambler].

One of the most popular agile methods is Extreme Programming (XP), which you can delve into via such Web sites as http://xprogramming.com and http://www.extremeprogramming.org. XP has spawned many books, which is why I now refer to it as the formerly lightweight methodology. The usual starting point is [Beck].

Although it's written for XP, [Beck and Fowler] gives more details on planning an iterative project. Much of this is also covered by the other XP books, but if you're interested only in the planning aspect, this would be a good choice.

For more information on the Rational Unified Process, my favorite introduction is [Kruchten].