Introduction

This book series is based on several premises. First and foremost is the premise that the Unified Process isn t complete, a concept that we ve addressed in detail. Not only is the Unified Process missing a phase, Production, and two workflows, the Operations and Support workflow and the Infrastructure Management workflow, it is also missing a wide range of activities in its existing workflows. This book series has presented myriad articles to address these shortcomings. The second premise, not addressed sufficiently until now, is that the Unified Process may not be right for you. No single software process will meet the needs of every single project team, no matter how many best practices it encompasses. What are your other options? What do you do when you find that you ve tried the Unified Process, you re at the end of a project and have discovered that the Unified Process isn t a good fit for your organization? Where do you go next? Currently your most viable alternatives to the Unified Process fall are the various agile software processes.