Product category:
Manufacturing Management Books, CDs and Videos
News Release from: O'Reilly | Subject: 'The Art of Agile Development'
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 04 December 2007
Knowing the art of agile development
Book focuses on the 'how to' of agile development and covers everything a team needs to know, from team dynamics and collaboration, to adaptive planning and agile engineering practices.
It's commonly known that most software projects fail to meet their deadlines or their budgets Perhaps more important, they fail to meet the needs of their users
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 14 Jul 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
O'Reilly Releases
Farnham, UK--Java Data Objects, or JDO, allows Java developers to manage data without any specialized knowledge of the underlying database software or database query languages.
O'Reilly Releases "Learning UML"
Learning to Communicate Software Design Graphically
As author Shane Warden says: "If the industry is to survive, we need to find a way to satisfy our customers".
Many developers look to remedy this situation with agile development.
Jim Shore, who is coauthor with Warden of the new book 'The Art of Agile Development' (O'Reilly), said: "Agile development is entering the mainstream, but it's poorly defined, so there's a lot of misunderstanding about what agile development is and how it works.
Further reading
New Edition of "PC Hardware in a Nutshell"
Staying on top of PC hardware means keeping up with the latest specs on a huge range of different technologies
Favourite Perl Recipes for Every Occasion
O'Reilly Releases "Perl Cookbook, Second Edition"
O'Reilly Releases "Windows XP Hacks"
Windows XP is the latest, most reliable, and best-looking version of the Windows operating system to emerge yet.
Teams are trying agile development, having some initial success, but also struggling with problems that have already been solved".
Shore, in 'The Art of Agile Development', said it focuses on the 'how to' of agile development in a way that is rigorous, complete, and accessible.
"It covers everything the team needs to know, from team dynamics and collaboration, to adaptive planning, to agile engineering practices," said Shore.
"The need for this information has just exploded in the last few years, and there's no other book available that provides it like we do".
Warden said: "If you ask Jim about the most important lesson in our book, he would probably say 'Assess and manage the risk of a software project appropriately' but I think the most important idea in our book may be that of aggressively pursuing rapid feedback in all aspects of the development process,." Warden added: "The ideas are very close relatives, however; there's a tremendous amount of knowledge and information available at every point in software development if you know how and where to look for it.
If you're willing and able to find that information, analyze it, and adapt to it, you have a tremendous advantage".
Shore and Warden have done much research in finding the information for those who are motivated to analyze it and adapt to it.
They provide an easy-to-read 'roadmap' for the entire process in their book.
'The Art of Agile Development' is a practical and up-to-date how-to guide based on years of experience with agile development.
The authors have provide clearly defined practices and tips for a wide variety of readers including project managers, business analysts and developers who need to deal with the specifics.
The book provides clear answers to questions such as the following.
* 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 quality assurance fit in.
James Shore is signatory number ten to the Agile Manifesto and has been coaching agile teams large and small before they were called agile.
He brings both breadth and depth to his discussion of agile development.
In 2005, the Agile Alliance recognized James with their most significant award, the Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice.
Shore is an internationally recognized speaker who consults for companies interested in agile development.
He writes about agile development on his top-ranked blog,
Shane Warden promotes free and open source software for O'Reilly's Open Technology Exchange.
In practice, this means editing and researching.
He is a co-author of 'The Art of Agile Development'.
He has contributed to several projects including Perl 5, Perl 6, Pugs, and, these days, Parrot.
Someday, he'd like to claim some responsibility for improving the quality of all software.
• O'Reilly: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Manufacturingtalk email newsletter
• Manufacturingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
