Becoming Agile: ...in an Imperfect World

The book really helped me organize my thoughts about Agile. The authors did a great job in simplifying the "transform to agile" process. If you intend to be AGILE, this is your shortest way to do it (Y)

This book is a much needed addition to the body of literature advocating agile / lean methodologies. As a developer, I've read lots of books that describe agile practices in detail but give only cursory treatment to how to bring agile into a workplace. In my experience, it's way too common to see organizations laboring under heavy waterfall methodologies because they're afraid or mistrustful of agile, or they describe their process as "agile", but it's poorly structured, lacks discipline, and periodically devolves into total chaos come release time (hence the fear among the waterfall set). I wish they all would read this book and give serious consideration to its recommendations. What sets this book apart is that it doesn't pretend that just by reading a book or two you'll be ready to Scrum your way to process nirvana. Instead, it is very realistic in its presentation of the challenges of implementing an agile methodology successfully. It describes the need to obtain buy-in from key stakeholders (esp. the people who control the purse strings), managers, developers, analysts, QA. It describes migrating to a new methodology as a process in itself and advises beginning with an evaluation of your current methodology to determine what to throw away, improve, or keep. And it advises retaining the services of an agile coach who is a skilled consultant / practitioner of agile methodologies who can teach your team how to function within a successful agile implementation. But before you start doing any of that, the book helps you build a clear understanding of what a successful agile practice looks like by presenting a case study. The level of detail in the description of the methodology is outstanding. It's comprehensive without being legalistic or dictatorial. A key principle of the book is adapting the methodology to the culture of the organization and the needs of a typical project. It presents a Scrum-centric methodology but includes coverage of agile concepts and practices from other methodologies as well (especially XP). The organization of the book is strong with the first two parts laying the groundwork and preparing for challenges of adopting agile and the remaining parts being the description of the methodology and its implementation. The chapters are brief and tightly focused. The book's attention to real-world issues is perhaps better than any other technical book I've read, and the authors definitely come across sounding more like experienced practitioners than academics. The only thing that would make the book better is if the agile assessment in the appendix came in a smaller version that I could take to job interviews and ask prospective employers to fill it out. Any company wanting to attract and retain good talent should work to build the kind of teams and processes described in this book.

I've read many a Project Management books and have also complimented my skills by taking courses in the local Universities. And, invariably what's taught and/or written about is the "ideal world" in regards to working on a project and delivering a given solution... -- Ideally the analysts will capture the requirements -- 100% -- Ideally the requirements will drive the time/effort to develop -- Ideally the solution is delivered on time and...Hopefully... -- "Ideally" the customers are 100% percent satisfied Never...ever in my 15 years working in the professional, technical environment...has the ideal world ever existed. If only more of my customers and technical counterparts adopted the concepts detailed within this book -- and basically rethink how projects should be approached and retool their own methods -- If this had happened more projects would have finished successfully and the team would've been better prepared to deal with issues as they were identified. Great book...It's a must read!!

If you are in any way responsible for becoming Agile in an organization, read this account from the front lines. It will help you understand what is needed in terms of people, motivations, buy in and selecting a 'quick win' problem. For me, this book is largely about leadership and winning the kind of ongoing consensus that forshadows continuing success. I read through this book after accumulating bruises in moving an organization to Agile. Both the author's description of what to do and what will happen if you do not resolve key issues are right on. Chapters 4 (assessment) and 7 (mindset) are particularly interesting. Chapter 4 could be more extensive but it covers so much that the principle weakness is that there is a lot of information jammed into a short chapter. There are external links provided to understand the depth of the how to assess readiness for Agile and I found that I needed that information. The topic is covered in chapter 4 and I may have just wanted more. Chapter 7 is excellent because it helps to focus on what (in my case) needs to happen in the leader's head to be successful. I found that these attitudes were essential to building effective, competent teams that consistently accept ownership of results. These attitudes are the keys, not the full list of what is required. What is important to me is that the chapter provides the short list, the ruler against which others are measured. I am pleased if I learn one or two immediately applicable things from a book because I read a lot of books. The author has provided many of these nuggets and has shown why they are valuable based on his experience. You get the feeling that he has done this before and is providing his experience in the best spirit of lessons learned as frankly discussed in a retrospective. I will re-read this book. I know I can extract and apply more from this account. The book is an excellent value and I hope there is a followup to help with how to change attitudes that do not measure up on the assessment.

I will be honest and say that this is the first "work related" book that actually captured my attention to the point that I would sit and read whilst my loved ones were enjoying their sweet slumber (and obviously blog about it). This book is highly informative; being neither condescending, nor pushy and over-bearing on the way that agile adoption should be approached. Without intending to be a partisan; I would even go as far as saying that it is more than recommended reading, it should be required reading for anyone thinking of migrating to agile; recent adoptees of agile or anyone in between. From the first chapters that guide us through the principles (I loved the annotated 12 principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development - section 1.1.2) and the descriptive text on the "paradigm shift from a plan-driven mentality"; to the readiness assessments and the importance of obtaining executive support; through to the population of the product backlog and on to the first iterations of an example company adopting Agility in their software development process. There is no substitute for actually reading the book, which is a must; however various chapters and sections drew my attention more than others. Section 1.1.2 - The agile principles: Although the manifesto has been analyzed and described on various blogs and books; the descriptive text for each principle was really handy when evangelizing on agile and is a good primer for anyone new to the subject (and possibly even for those of us who have been practicing agile). Section 1.2 - A paradigm shift from a plan-driven mentality: This is a must read for those of us who have come from years of waterfall and attempts at changes to "traditional" methodologies or processes. The section highlights the change in mentality that is needed to move from more traditional ways of software development to a leaner, more agile way. Section 2.4 - What does it look like when a team "becomes agile": With comparative plan related diagrams of how the change is made from waterfall to agile and the breakdown of how that transition was made; is comforting for those that have made the change as well as those that are thinking about/planning the change. Section 3.2 - The different flavors of agile: This section has a really good breakdown of strengths and weaknesses of the two foremost agile methods; Scrum and XP. Section 3.3 - Create your own flavor to become agile within your constraints: When I first started in agile there seemed to be a common mantra that permeated throughout the meetings and blogs that effectively stated if you weren't doing it exactly by the book, you weren't being agile. It is completely preposterous. How can the same agile development methods used by a web advertising company be cookie-cut for a software company writing client server applications in a strong regulatory environment? The answer is - it can't. There will need to be some adaptation. After all isn't that one of the p