Want to be a better developer? This books collects the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and presents them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips. This isn't academic fluff; follow these ideas and you'll show yourself, your teammates, and your managers real results. These are the proven and effective agile practices that will make you a better developer.
This book will help you improve five areas of your career:
These practices provide guidelines that will help you succeed in delivering and meeting your user's expectations, even if the domain is unfamiliar. You'll be able to keep normal project pressure from turning into disastrous stress while writing code, and see how to effectively coordinate mentors, team leads, and developers in harmony.
You can learn all this stuff the hard way, but this book can save you time and pain. Read it, and you'll be a better developer.
Want to be a better developer? This book collects the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and presents them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips.
| 1 | Agile Software Development | 1 |
| 2 | Beginning Agility | 11 |
| 1 | Work for Outcome | 13 |
| 2 | Quick Fixes Become Quicksand | 16 |
| 3 | Criticize Ideas, Not People | 19 |
| 4 | Damn the Torpedoes, Go Ahead | 24 |
| 3 | Feeding Agility | 27 |
| 5 | Keep Up with Change | 29 |
| 6 | Invest in Your Team | 32 |
| 7 | Know When to Unlearn | 35 |
| 8 | Question Until You Understand | 38 |
| 9 | Feel the Rhythm | 41 |
| 4 | Delivering What Users Want | 45 |
| 10 | Let Customers Make Decisions | 47 |
| 11 | Let Design Guide, Not Dictate | 50 |
| 12 | Justify Technology Use | 54 |
| 13 | Keep It Releasable | 57 |
| 14 | Integrate Early, Integrate Often | 60 |
| 15 | Automate Deployment Early | 63 |
| 16 | Get Frequent Feedback Using Demos | 66 |
| 17 | Use Short Iterations, Release in Increments | 71 |
| 18 | Fixed Prices Are Broken Promises | 75 |
| 5 | Agile Feedback | 79 |
| 19 | Put Angels on Your Shoulders | 81 |
| 20 | Use It Before You Build It | 85 |
| 21 | Different Makes a Difference | 90 |
| 22 | Automate Acceptance Testing | 93 |
| 23 | Measure Real Progress | 96 |
| 24 | Listen to Users | 99 |
| 6 | Agile Coding | 101 |
| 25 | Program Intently and Expressively | 103 |
| 26 | Communicate in Code | 108 |
| 27 | Actively Evaluate Trade-Offs | 113 |
| 28 | Code in Increments | 116 |
| 29 | Keep It Simple | 118 |
| 30 | Write Cohesive Code | 120 |
| 31 | Tell, Don't Ask | 124 |
| 32 | Substitute by Contract | 127 |
| 7 | Agile Debugging | 131 |
| 33 | Keep a Solutions Log | 132 |
| 34 | Warnings Are Really Errors | 135 |
| 35 | Attack Problems in Isolation | 139 |
| 36 | Report All Exceptions | 142 |
| 37 | Provide Useful Error Messages | 144 |
| 8 | Agile Collaboration | 149 |
| 38 | Schedule Regular Face Time | 151 |
| 39 | Architects Must Write Code | 155 |
| 40 | Practice Collective Ownership | 158 |
| 41 | Be a Mentor | 160 |
| 42 | Allow People to Figure It Out | 163 |
| 43 | Share Code Only When Ready | 165 |
| 44 | Review Code | 168 |
| 45 | Keep Others Informed | 171 |
| 9 | Epilogue: Moving to Agility | 173 |
| 9.1 | Just One New Practice | 173 |
| 9.2 | Rescuing a Failing Project | 174 |
| 9.3 | Introducing Agility: The Manager's Guide | 175 |
| 9.4 | Introducing Agility: The Programmer's Guide | 177 |
| 9.5 | The End? | 178 |
| A | Resources | 179 |
| A.1 | On the Web | 179 |
| A.2 | Bibliography | 182 |
Anonymous
Posted May 24, 2006
Venkat and Andy has done an excellet Job putting this book together, i am only at chapter 5 right now but so far from what i have read they have dicussed about every situation i have experienced as a developer in my career. I recomend this book to anyone who is fighting with the angel and devil in their head about making decisions on a agile development environment. A+++++++++++
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Posted April 21, 2006
In my own work, I am struggling with various agile vs. non-agile practices, but sometimes it can be hard to see why a non-agile practice is worse in the long run than an agile practice. This books goes a long ways toward identifying the problems with non-agile practices by identifying an agile practice, then showing the benefits of following it as well as the result if it isn¿t followed. Throughout the book, a little angel and a demon show up¿the angel illustrating a ¿good¿ practice, and the demon illustrating a ¿bad¿ practice. This makes the book a fun read and I think really helps in illustrating the authors¿ points. The book includes 45 different points that an agile developer should follow. For example, ¿Criticize Ideas, Not People¿ and ¿Keep it Releasable¿. Each section begins with one of these points, followed by a little demon telling you why you shouldn¿t follow the agile principle. More often than not, you¿ll find that the demon¿s arguments are things you might have heard from your co-workers, managers, or someone else in your work environment. After the authors¿ explain why the particular agile principle is important, the little angel sums up why the principle is important. Again, it sounds silly, but it¿s an effective teaching mechanism. It¿s also a lot of fun when the demon¿s arguments are ones you¿ve heard before. In reading the book, I had the sense that the authors were really trying to be unbiased in their discussion of agile. They present some very convincing case studies of how some projects when terribly wrong, and how it could have been prevented with some very simple agile practices. With some books on agile, you have the sense that the authors have never written a line of code in their life. This book was a good reality-check for me. The authors sound like they know what they¿re talking about, and they talk about real-life problems that all of us experience in our coding. I would highly recommend this book to developers looking to become more agile, but needing something that¿s actually applicable to the real world.
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Overview
Want to be a better developer? This books collects the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and presents them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips. This isn't academic fluff; follow these ideas and you'll show yourself, your teammates, and your managers real results. These are the proven and ...