Product Description
The Art of Agile Development contains practical guidance for anyone considering or applying agile development for building valuable software. Plenty of books describe what agile development is or why it helps software projects succeed, but very few combine information for developers, managers, testers, and customers into a single package that they can apply directly. This book provides no-nonsense advice on agile planning, development, delivery, and management taken from the authors' many years of experience with Extreme Programming (XP). You get a gestalt view of the agile development process, including comprehensive guidance for non-technical readers and hands-on technical practices for developers and testers. The Art of Agile Development gives you clear answers to questions such as: How can we adopt agile development? Do we really need to pair program? What metrics should we report? What if I can't get my customer to participate? How much documentation should we write? When do we design and architect? As a non-developer, how should I work with my agile team? Where is my product roadmap? How does QA fit in? The book teaches you how to adopt XP practices, describes each practice in detail, then discusses principles that will allow you to modify XP and create your own agile method. In particular, this book tackles the difficult aspects of agile development: the need for cooperation and trust among team members. Whether you're currently part of an agile team, working with an agile team, or interested in agile development, this book provides the practical tips you need to start practicing agile development. As your experience grows, the book will grow with you, providing exercises andinformation that will teach you first to understand the rules of agile development, break them, and ultimately abandon rules altogether as you master the art of agile development. "Jim Shore and Shane Warden expertly explain the practices and benefits of Extreme Programming. They offer advice from their real-world experiences in leading teams. They answer questions about the practices and show contraindications - ways that a practice may be mis-applied. They offer alternatives you can try if there are impediments to applying a practice, such as the lack of an on-site customer. --Ken Pugh, Author of Jolt Award Winner, Prefactoring "I will leave a copy of this book with every team I visit." --Brian Marick, Exampler Consulting

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 16 reviews)

Practical, De-mystifying, Comprehensive

This is a fabulous book for anyone interested in transitioning to agile or who wants to prune, right size, re-vitalize or increase velocity on your current agile projects.

The insiders view (XP developer, architect, programmer) is unleashed with balance and care to give you the big picture. That means that not just developers, but also other stakeholders will benefit from this book: testers, business analysts, quality assurance folk, project leaders/managers, coaches, team facilitators and any other delivery team or advisory stakeholders.

I really liked the dense information provided around the breath of topics from visioning and planning to incremental design and test-driven/exploratory testing; from how to deal with bugs in the backlog to collaboration tips. Jim and Shane offer a wealth of practical, real-world wisdom.

The format provides sidebar "allies" on practices so you can make connections in practices. At the close of each chapter the authors provide something quite friendly and practical: short sections for "Questions" (what question might you ask about the topic just discussed), "Results" (outcomes of the practice you should experience), "Contraindications" (things to watch out for), "Alternatives" (other ways to approach the topic), and "Further Reading" (references to other published works). This ties up each topic beautifully.

Regardless of your official role on your project or what flavor of agile you practice, you will greatly benefit by reading, studying, applying, and continually dipping into this wonderful book.
December 03, 2008

Invaluable

This is an exceptional book -- one that every developer should read even if they do not use the methods within.

The book reads sort of like a recipe book, with lots of little practices and how to do them. The early chapters are fairly prescriptive, presenting XP as a reasonable basis practice from which to evolve. Later chapters dig in on more specific practices and ways to extend your development. Each practice is examined for the how and what (what's the practice, how do I use it), why (what's the benefit) and when and where (in what contexts should I or should I not use this practice). The individual sections are fairly tightly focussed, so it can sometimes read like a number of separate practices operating in a vacuum. That said, the book deserves a thorough and mindful reading, because the big picture has to happen in your head rather than on the page. If there's a major flaw in the book, it would be that the tone of the writing is at times disarmingly colloquial, so it sometimes takes a while to realize that a major point was actually major.

The most impressive thing (for me) about this book is the way that Shore and Warden seemed biased towards the reader's success (with Agile methods a tool-chest in service to that end), rather than being biased towards the reader's success with Agile (with the methods just part of an Agile hammer). This quality pays dividends in the "contraindications" section, where Shore and Warden describe when *not* to use a practice, and what sorts of practices (Agile or not) or controls might be a better fit for your circumstances. In these sections, the veneer is off: Shore and Warden's goal seems to have less to do with your adoption of Agile and more to do with your success. Never mind the title of the book -- ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Over the course of my career I've been in successful projects and failed projects, using traditional methods, agile methods, and no methods at all. While I never rigorously studied the correlation, my memory tells me that the most successful projects were done by people who were constantly aware of the what, when and why of their work process, and who thoughtfully adapted the process to improve development. This book is for people who think like that, and for people who want to think like that.
November 17, 2008

Agile and XP Development. Good but too many long, too many repetitive ...

I red this book because I want to be an 'agile Developer'. The books it's very good, cover XP techniques from different points of view (manager, programmer, tester, etc.). The only drawback for me it's that some times the text it's very repetitive. In some chapter I found this very boring and some times exasperating. I think that this book will be great with 150 pages, but close to 400 pages it's too much.
October 30, 2008

An extremely practical guide to extreme programming

This book has three parts in it - introduction to agility, guide to extreme programming and afterthoughts. You may want to read this book if you want to set up XP in your team or participate in it. It is mostly beneficial for the developers or project managers to read it.

The first part (Getting Started) is about 40 pages long and just puts you on the right track by discussing what agility means and introducing you to extreme programming. Here is where the authors explain how to determine whether XP is right in your case, what prerequisites are needed and what steps need to be taken to start.

The second part (Practicing XP) takes most of the book, some 300 pages and contains detailed guide to extreme programming. This is where all the XP practices are explained one by one. Each is given a big chapter - Thinking, Collaborating, Releasing, Planning and Developing. Inside each chapter, there is a detailed explanation of the relevant practices.

The last part (Mastering Agility) is again on the smaller side, it takes 40 pages and contains assorted advices along the "rules are there to be broken" lines. Afterthoughts to help you improve XP once you think you have mastered it.

It is therefore safe to say that the book is essentially a guide to XP, and a good one too. The writing style is excellent - information is organized in half a page long self-contained chunks, each chunk covers some concept or answers some question. Because of this, it is really easy to follow the material.

Even better, each chapter is closed with mandatory sections Questions, Results, Contraindications, Alternatives. Questions are indeed short Q&A and the questions were real-life, more often than not I have found mine answered. Results explain what exactly comes out of the discussed practice. Contraindications explain what obstacles there could appear. Alternatives explain what to do whenever you cannot use the discussed practice. Very realistic and informative.

There were a few imaginary tales from the field. You know, the ones that go like
- "We use XP here", said Alice.
- "Wow !", said Bob.
I don't generally like such stories, they make me feel stupid and therefore in my opinion the book (just like any other) could have got without them better. But this is just me.

An extremely practical guide to extreme programming.

August 10, 2008

My favorite Agile Development book

I have about a dozen books on Agile and Lean development and this rapidly became my favorite.

Why: It's advice at the level I can use. Clear solid explanation and methods to understand what to do, what not to do, and most important, why.

It's just incredibly easy to read and use.

I've already bought 2 more copies to share with friends!
June 09, 2008

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