The Unified Process Explained is a concise, accessible, and practical guide that's meant to help significantly shorten the learning curve for students unfamiliar with this methodology. Step-by-step it explains the essentials of the Unified Process (the RUP's core elements) and shows how to put the methodology to work.

The book starts with a useful overview of the history, motivation, key concepts, and terminology of the Unified Process. The author then details the five pillars of development: requirements, analysis, design, implementation, and test workflows. In addition, the book enumerates the four phases of Unified Process development: inception, elaboration, construction, and transition; and it shows how the workflows are integrated into these phases. In laying out the details of this integration, the book illustrates the Unified Process's most useful feature-its iterative nature.