Great little book. Very approachable, very well written.

I really enjoyed this. While I didn't really have a 'wow' moment reading it, it is doing a better job of 'sticking to my brain' than many programming books, and I feel like I actually changed some of my perspectives and approaches to problems because of it.

I particularly like the format, and the inclusion of 'balance' sections for techniques rather than the 'thou shalt' ultimatums that are often found in books about practices.

Thought this had some really nice perspectives on agile development in the workplace. Short chapters, all with a similar structure so it's easy to pick up/put down and read in short bursts. Don't necessarily need to read it cover to cover.

However the book is quite old, so some of the practices it advocates for are really just mainstream now. So while those sections aren't super useful, I can't really knock it for advocating early for using version control, testing, and continuous integration :)

Great book, lots of practical advices and best practices. It's full of many steps that you can follow today, even though your company doesn't follow agile methodology. I'm very glad that my team follow most of them, but a lot of room for improvement there is.

Even though I was familiar to most agile techniques, I definitely recommend this book to anybody that has limited understanding to them. It will not only give you great ideas about how to improve your workflow, reduce the mistake factor, collaborate better, etc., but also gives a great idea about how to implment these ideas in existing environments, when you don't have the chance to start a team and/or a project from scratch.

You would think that most of the tips this book offers are taken for granted these days. Unfortunately, teams and companies can still learn from it. Of course, some things got outdated, like the features source control systems have. Others, on the other hand, are still relevant. There are some good tips regarding communication and collaboration within teams, decision-making, and practices to ensure code quality. The book is easy to read and suggests how to find a balance when implementing each practice.

Was a really good intro to Agile from a developer's perspective. While I wouldn't use it as my only resource to set up an Agile shop, it's a decent place to start to gain a basic knowledge of Agile concepts what changes you may have to make in order to become Agile.

Ma note de lecture complète en français ici

Reading this, I realized there were several small things that were missing from my day to day practices.

Still there are several parts in this book that I have difficulty agreeing with. To me a process has no meaning if it is not intelligent and flexible. To adapt agile or not what is more important is to keep thinking on your toes, you cannot close your eyes and blindly commit to x document or y approach. Agile or otherwise, it is important to always think, question things and find answers, all the time, at every step of the project.(I am getting repetitive here...sry...)

There are several things that hit home! especially when the author talks about cross functional collaboration!

My favorite chapter was #4: Delivering what users want (although again, I disagree with #18: fixed prices are broken promises - if you think it well, fixed price projects can be delivered well with Agile, it just needs more intelligence).
However my favorite lessons were #35: Attack problems in isolation and #39: Architects must write code.

What #39 says is extremely important! I have seen so many companies default here! Forget architects, we sometimes encounter team leads (and up) who have stopped writing code as a daily exercise! The chapter reasons well against this practice.

Overall this was a nice read. So many software engineering/management book sell fluff and read like they are written for retards. It's nice to see a book that gets it right "most of the time". Do read, even if to disagree. :)

S.

This book does have some good bits in it, but sometimes I feel like it's preaching to the choir: if you get the advice than you probably already knew about it.