|
It explains every concept with golden words without putting unnecessary keywords to expand book's page size. It takes you from what is the motivation behind agile to how to practically live with it. If you are starting to agile methodologies but don't know where to start from this is it. It is brief and useful at best.Also, it's like a patterns book. And in the end how to tune it to suit your extreme needs.The book is about extreme programming mostly but does not limit its scope to there. Other houses of agile community will also find this book practical and to the point. Authors have put a tiny box on each subject to other related subjects. This advances your mind links for each topic.The tips coming from authors' real life experiences and also contains further references to other books and articles in case you are in need to receive more information.I recommend this book for new comers to agile and experienced people who wants to tune their practices to their extreme cases.
The "Getting Started" section provides a solid foundation for understanding agile mechanics and even deciding if it is right for your situation. James Shore and Shane Warden consolidate years of experience with agile practices based primarily on Extreme Programming (XP), which has long been considered a good set of engineering practices to compliment the management practices of Scrum. The specific practices are well organized, clearly explained, extensively cross-references and presented in an appealing "pattern language" format. The "Mastering Agility" section gives a good description of the values and principles that make agile work. This makes a good concluding section because it provides a good roadmap for developing more agile maturity once you've had some success applying the specific practices.
Having not been exposed to Agile, I found "The Art of Agile Development" a very good read. They also had answers and responses to my "but what about." thoughts in the Questions and Contraindications section for each practice. Shore and Warden described Agile practices in a way that was easy to read and more entertaining than I expected (compared to most of the technical books that I read). I believe they presented the practices very well. I also appreciate the extensive list of References for further knowledge and reading. As the title says, I do find this a good addition to my library.
While I believe the latter is MUCH more desireable, the authors at least recognize that this is not possible in some corporate cultures. Risk Management - The authors have pulled together the analysis of project release data from various sources and provide some ways to intellegently update initial release plan estimates to arrive at a risk adjusted release date.
I would recommend it to anyone active in Agile software development or anyone simply thinking about adopting XP with Scrum. What were the biggest positive surprises found in reading the book.
I recently read The Art of Agile Development as part of an Agile book discussion group. There are also considerations of "waste" introduced by having to collect this information up front in documentation rather than relying on a back and forth discussion as needed.
Team member role ratios - The authors suggest as a rule of thumb to start with 2 on-site customers (including the product manager) for every 3 programers. He makes a very good point that if your programmers are your constraint, then it is very important to not bottle neck their efforts with wait time on "how should the software work" questions.
Most Agile references I am familiar with resist making this type of commitment and instead focus on changing the company culture to not require the commitment until you have enough data on the team velocity. From the Agile newbie to the seasoned consultant, The Art of Agile Development offers plenty of fresh examples along with the underlying principles to help the reader master the art of successful software development.
I found the book doesn't sell "XP", but does make a solid case for the value systems that XP supports. Although there were a few areas that I had to reread for comprehension - it is written in such a way as to provide a complete foundation of understanding, both for the novice and the expert. As a complete novice to Agile, this was my first book. It is written in a very easy to read format with etudes, approach, and questions, and has constant cross-references within the book and to outside sources which is extraordinarily helpful. The book utilizes not only the practical "how to" but also deals with the different behaviors displayed and how to manage those - which is typically the `sticky point' in any change management effort. As a 15-year project management veteran, the book was artfully crafted as it employs real world examples, states the relationships between the various principles of XP - and why they are all important, and submits strong cases of why partial implementations fail, and even lists additional alternatives to the typical implementation. There is a bit of reiteration which can be irritating to some, but also can be reinforcing as it is done in various styles. Overall, a must have for the Agile developer.
|
