BUP Component

Meeting Notes (01/17/06)

Participants:
Bruce Macisaac, IBM
Ricardo Balduino, IBM
Kirti Vaidya, Covansys
Brian Haughton, BearingPoint
Brian G. Lyons, Number Six Software, Inc.
Per Kroll, IBM
Steve Adolph, WSA Consulting, Inc.
Sigurd Hopen, 2-Pro Mentor

Naming:
There was a spirited discussion with participation from everyone on the call. Here are some (possibly subjective) high points:
- We agree that the process we are talking about has ancestry in the Unified Process
- While sharing a concern that there is a subset of the development community that will have heartburn over the relationship to the UP, it was agreed that changing the name will not really avert this problem.
- While from our jaded perspectives the UP could be considered “long in the tooth”, to many organizations it still represents modern practices that they aspire to.
- The UP has a good name in many IT shops and even amongst industry analysts.
- It could be desirable to demonstrate a new, fresh perspective, but there is value to the UP brand that we should think twice before discarding in the name.
Our “working title” name is staying as BUP for the time being. There was no alternate suggestion that had enough traction to get us off that horse.

Blurb:
Based on all the work already done via email messages, we committed to the following blurb that is just a slightly re-organized version of what was sent off before the meeting:
The Basic Unified Process (BUP) is an iterative software development process that is minimal, complete, and extensible. The process is minimal in that only fundamental content is included, the process is complete in that it can be manifested as an entire process to build a system, and the process is extensible in that it can be used as a foundation on which process content can be added or tailored as needed. The BUP takes an agile approach to development valuing team collaboration and benefits to the stakeholders over unproductive deliverables and formality. The process provides this progressive approach to building systems within a proven, structured lifecycle.

The Basic Unified Process is driven by the following core principles:
- Application of an iterative lifecycle that mitigates risk early and often, and shows results early and often
- Focus on the collaboration within a development team including the product stakeholders to maximize results
- Management of requirements in a form that represents stakeholder value and drives the development process
- Cognizance of architecture as a means to increase quality and technical understandability

Analysis of current BUP content:
The participants were not prepared to talk too much about the current BUP content. Some discussion points were:
- The current BUP nails all of our core principles except Collaboration. It will need to be beefed up to better capture that essence.
- When looking at it being ~70% done, Ricardo noted that the Project Management and Requirements pieces are very strong and the Implementation and Architecture pieces have more gaps.
- We discussed the Initial Page that people will see as they open the process. This needs to “nail it” in a way that inspires people to be interested.

We closed this part of the discussion deciding that Bruce should do a 2 hour demo of the BUP content along with explanations as to the thought behind various decisions. We decided that this would be something that all committers and contributors should see.

Next Steps:
- The BUP walkthrough with explanation webinar will be from 8-10 PST on Wednesday, January 25.
- Our next conference call will be from 8-9 PST on Wednesday February 1. By the end of this conference call we should have a set of special interest groups that can plan how to spend the month of February preparing for the end of iteration 1 milestone at the end of February.
- Invites will be sent out with the logistics, etc. for these two events.