blogs.jhu.edu/blawler

To get started, I recommend as a first read “UML Distilled” (3rd edition, by Fowler). Chapter 10 gives a short but good introduction. Introduces the notation and a little bit about the technique. Does not really explain state analysis well-enough for someone who has never done this technique.

To really understand the topic, suggest a look at one or more of “Unified Modeling Language User Guide”(2nd edition, by Booch et al), the “UML Toolkit” book published by OMG, or Booch’s “Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications” (3rd edition, see my review). All of these are good. The UML User Guide is my personal favorite with regard to notation but Booch’s OOAD is better about aspects of the technique.

I have general reviews (not just about state diagrams and analysis) on Amazon.com - see here.

To get to some of the finer points, “Real-Time UML”by Douglas has some additional material.

For some background on OOAD or UML and state diagrams, you might read “Object-Oriented Analysis and Design” by Rumbaugh et al. There are also some interesting parts in Jacobson’s “Object Oriented Software Engineering”.However, be forewarned that neither uses UML. Still, there are some interesting ideas here and the leap from the notation they use to modern UML isn’t impossible.

A lot of modern UML state diagrams and the underlying techniques comes from David Harel’s work (see PDF). However, for most software development applications, the learning curve on that work might be prohibitively difficult.