Suggested Books
Agile Software Development
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Suggested Books
Agile Software Development
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Manage It! will help you understand how to manage projects effectively, taking into account the needs of the people working on the project as well as the needs of the business sponsors. In this regard Johanna Rothman follows in the steps of authors like Jerry Weinberg by showing you how to set up a project environment that helps software developers be more effective and thus be better able to deliver value to their customers. This book has pragmatic advice on how to make progress and issues visible, how to plan a project, and most everything else you need to help a project come to a good conclusion. This book is unique in that while it discusses the benefits of agile lifecycles, it shows you how to make progress in a variety of software lifecycles, and gives advice on when to use the various lifecycles she discusses. Buy this book if you want to be a more effective project manager (or technical lead who works with project managers), or if you want to be more agile but are not sure how.
This a classic book that anyone who build computer systems should read. Some of the specific examples are dated, though many caused me to nod in acknowledgment, especially his observations about alarm clocks and TV remotes, Inmates describes goal directed design, the concept of Pesonas, ideas which, whether they make sense for your project are not, are ones that you should be aware of. This book also explains what "polite software" is and emphasizes the market advantages to good interaction design. Even if this book doesn't change the way you work, it will help you think about the relationship between interaction design and programming. Among the interesting points Cooper makes are Customer Driven isn't aways the best model (customer influenced is better), and neither is Engineering Driven; software designers should go beyond customers say they want and help them to understand what they need. There were a few things towards the end of the book that struck me as just wrong. For example Cooper says that most developers don't believe that they are the best people to test their code. Most Agile software developers would challenge that point. Agile developers would also challenge the recurring theme that the engineering team can't make the leap to understanding the customer enough to build good interaction design. He ignores the value of a specializing generalist, which is an important concept in today's projects. Regardless, this is a book that anyone building software systems should read, if only to understand the concepts underlying interaction design.
Implementing Lean Software Development is an essential resource if you want to understand the value of lean software development. It explains the theory of lean manaufacturing and how it applies to software development. It contains practical advice for implementing Lean and anecdotes to help you to understand the value of Lean. This is a great addition to the library of any agile developer or project manager.
A Wicked Problem is a problem where some of the solution space lies within the problem space; the problem is only fully understood after it is solved. Thsi book describes how many programming problems fall into the catgegory of wicked problems and how waterfall softwarae development practices are not well suited to these kinds of problems.This book explains how agille approaches are more suited for many software development projects. In addition to all of this, this book had many excellent references.
This book is an excellent overview of why Continuous Integration is important and about more than just compiling frequently. The book helps you to understand why to do CI, what you can do beyond building, and how to do it. In addition to general principles, the book points you to some excellent tools and resources. This book is an excellent companion to Software Configuration Management Patterns; it provides teriffic information that support the build patterns in that book.
This book helps you to understand why creating production ready code requires work at many levels: creating the deployment architecture, operations scenarios, and just plain writing code and testing. The book covers issues that every architect, developer and release engineer should know. The book has principles, patterns, and resources to help you identify production problems, prevent them, and survive them when all else fails.
One of the better features of the book is the stories that help you to understand issues and demonstrate that Nygard's lessons are based in experience. The lessons are (as the name of the series suggests) pragmatic, and each chapter leaves you with enough information to make changes to improve your application.
In books of this sort there is a balance between "principles" that are timeless and "how to" techniques that you can use immediately. This book is biased slightly towards Java, and contains a few references to current tools, there are enough general principles that there is little in the book that will date it.
As I read the book I found information about many topics that arose in each project that I have worked on, as well as things that I felt that I needed to learn more about.
After I finished the book I felt energized to do things better. If you build enterprise applications buy this book to learn how to build more production-ready applications. If you already know the lessons in the book, buy a copy or two for your colleagues who may not so that your life will be easier and you can get fewer late-night phone calls about a system you helped build.
If you need a good overview of what it takes to deliver software, give this book a look. It is easy to read, clearly written, and covers the important stuff. The book is geared at people who are less than experts, and as such covers some of the topics very briefly, but the book has some excellent pointers to other sources. The authors do a great job of collecting pointers to resources where you can learn more; you will want to keep the book around as a reference for them. The authors talk about a form of agile development that emphasizes tracer bullet development and a feature-based (as opposed to time boxed) approach to setting a delivery schedule. I tend to think that time boxed approaches are more useful, but the other good information in the book still makes sense if you use any approach to developing software. The authors also have some very practical advice on tool selection. The tools and infrastructure section of the book have pragmatic advice on how to implement the patterns in the Software Configuration Management Patterns book, and I wish that the authors had referenced the SCM Patterns book, if for no other reason than to help establish a common vocabulary in our domain. Over all, this is worth a read to learn (or reenforce) some of the basics about keeping a project running well. And if you already know everything in the book, buy a copy for your colleagues who don't!
This clearly written book provides insights into some common and vexing problems about how to do estimation and planning. This book helps you to prioritize what you want to build as well as as how long it will take to build it. The facts are complimented with stories from Mike Cohn's experience, which makes this book entertaining as well as informative. Much of the information in the book sounds obvious, but since few projects get estimation, scoping and planning right, it's pretty clear that it's only obvious in retospect. This book is a must have for people who are running agile teams and those who play the role of product owners. It will remain a useful reference througout the project. Even those on non-agile teams will find the chapters on selecting and prioritizing features useful.
This book explains, in detail, the value of having a tester role on an XP project. Much of what is written on XP focuses on the role of developers in writing tests, and this book will help you understand the value that testing professionals can add to an XP, or other agile, project. The function of a tester changes when a team applies XP; In the spirt of lean software development, this book shows you how to apply the skills of testers in a new environment. One minor flaw in the book is that it is targeted at testers. While testers need to understand how to apply their skills to an XP environment, others such as Coaches, programmers and project managers also need to understand the value of testers. Get this book to understand how testers can improve your XP project.
This is an excellent book about how to develop software
quickly in the face of changing requirements, and the definitive
description of what Extreme Programming is. The second edition
reflects the experience of doing XP for the 5 years since the
first edition came out. This edition clearly explains the
relationships between principles, practices and values, which is a
frequent topic of discussion in the XP community. Extreme
Programming Explained, 2nd Edition is really about the human side
of programming; With this book Kent Beck has earned a seat next to
Jerry Weinberg as someone who understands how to apply an
understanding of human nature to the problem of how to build
software effectively. Get this book if you want to apply XP in
your organization, or even if you simply want to improve your
practices; there is much to learn from the XP approach, even if
you can not, or will not, apply it fully.
This book shows you how to apply patterns and
refactorings to the task of untangling legacy code so that you can
apply effective techniques like test driven development as you
change the code. Since there will always be legacy code, this is a
very practical book. The author emphasises the role of testing as
a change enabler in a way that echos the the ideas in the SCM
Patterns book.
Get this book both as an introduction to what JUnit
can do for you and also as a reference when you are looking
for information on how to solve a particular testing
problem. The book covers the basics of using JUnit as well as issues around database and J2EE testing. It is filled with pointers to many frameworks and resources that can simplify your testing experience. This is not just a testing cookbook. J.B. also discusses issues such as how to design for testing (and how that can improve your architecture) as well as what to do when you need to test legacy code. This is an excellent guide to the details of how to use JUnit effectively. 
This book explains why lean manufacturing
works. There is much you can learn about lean software development by
learning about lean thinking in this, more concrete, domain. Read this
book to learn the more general concepts of lean production so that you
can better understand them and better explain them to your software
development colleagues and management.
People build software systems in organizations, and
the interesting problems often occur at the places where
technology issues and people issues intersect. An
understanding of how software organizations work is
essential to building good software systems. Coplien and
Harrison are two of the pioneers in writing patterns about software
organizations, and this book is a useful guide to helping you
understand how to build effective software development
organizations. 
This book helped me understand more details about how to implement
Scrum. The combines some simple overviews of Scrum rules and practices
with case studies. The rules of Scrum are simple. Apply these rules in
your context can be tricky. I found that the case studies that thread
throughout the book really helped me to understand some of the nuances
of the Scrum process. And if you want a checklist, there is a appendix
that summarizes the rules of Scrum. This is a great book if you want to learn about Scrum as a project management tool, or if you have been trying to use Scrum and want a chance to renew your understanding.
Prag Auto is an excellent companion to the Scm patterns book if you are doing Java Dev. It uses simple examples to show you how to set up a private workspace, integration build , release line among others. using open source tools. I wish that the book had referenced the patterns by name so as to set up a common vocabulary.
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt have written an excellent book, Pragmatic Version Control which explains how to use CVS in a basic and effective way. This book is an excellent companion to the SCM Patterns Book.
This is an excellent guide to writing User Stories. In addition to explaining what user stories are and how to write them, the book shows you how user stories fit into the development process and answers many of the common questions that arise when one starts writing stories. If you want to start using stories as part of your development process, buy this book; you'll want to read it and have it around for reference later.
This book answers many common questions about Pair Programming and supports the answers with data and stories. This is a very readable book, and will be an excellent resource for anyone trying to implement pair programming, or convince others of its usefulness in appropriate situations.
In this book McBreen gives a well reasoned
discussion of what XP is and is not, when it works and when it
might not work. The book is positive about the merits of XP,
when used in the right setting. This book will be valuable to
anyone who is considering changing their development approach,
even is they are not considering Extreme Programming. Both
enthusiast and skeptics alike will find the material in the
book thought provoking.
Planning Extreme Programming gives you advice on how
to fit the XP Planning game, and related aspects into the
larger context. This book will be particularly useful if you
have had to reconcile the XP approach of incremental
development and planning with an organization that takes a
master plan approach.
Extreme Programming Installed describes how to
implement XP practices with practical advice based on
experience. Buy this book when you are ready to implement XP
for your team.
The principles that this book discusses: Release,
Collaboration Ensemble and Play are extremely relevant to
creating effective software teams. The principles are inspired
by observing how theatre companies work, but they also have a
basis in lean manufacturing. If you work as a
software developer or manager and have ever worked on a
theatre production (community theatre or at school) a light
will go on immediately. If you haven't The data that the
authors provide about lean manufacturing practices and
software development will convince you that there is a lot
that we can learn from this metaphor. The theatre examples will be
helpful in explaining how the principles work if you need to
communicate them to a manager who does not understand software
development. Buy this book and place it along side your books
on agile software development; you will want to read it and refer
back to it frequently.
Through examples and a collection of patterns, this
book explains what test driven development is, and what it is
for. Every agile developer should read this book.
This is an
excellent discussion of how the principles of Lean
Manufacturing apply to Software Development. The authors
explain why the usual metaphor of software as manufacturing is
not quite right, and why the metaphor of Lean Manufacturing
is. It is well written and will be useful to refer to as a
reference.
Excellent book that explains Scrum, one of the more
popular agile development techniques. The approach in this
book is very pragmatic. The authors discuss what Scrum is and
how to apply it in various environments.
You should buy this book if you have any role in
making decisions about your project. It discusses how how
manage risks and explains why some corporate cultures
discourage risk management, often to their disadvantage. The
writing is very clear. This is a quick and informative
read.
An excellent survey to the principles of agile
development approaches such as Extreme Programming , SCRUM,
and others. The book mixes discussions of the core ideas with
interviews with some of the founders of the Agile Alliance
.