This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

Proven Patterns and Techniques for Succeeding with Agile in Your Organization

Agile methods promise to help you create software that delivers far more business value—and do it faster, at lower cost, and with less pain. However, many organizations struggle with implementation and leveraging these methods to their full benefit. In this book, Amr Elssamadisy identifies the powerful lessons that have been learned about successfully moving to agile and distills them into 30 proven agile adoption patterns.

Elssamadisy walks you through the process of defining your optimal agile adoption strategy with case studies and hands-on exercises that illuminate the key points. He systematically examines the most common obstacles to agile implementation, identifying proven solutions. You’ll learn where to start, how to choose the best agile practices for your business and technical environment, and how to adopt agility incrementally, building on steadily growing success.

Next, he presents the definitive agile adoption pattern reference: all the information you need to implement the strategy that you’ve already defined. Utilizing the classic pattern format, he explains each agile solution in its proper context, revealing why it works—and how to make the most of it. The pattern reference prepares you to

• Understand the core drivers, principles, and values associated with agile success

• Tightly focus development on delivering business value–and recognize the “smells” of a project headed off track

• Gain rapid, effective feedback practices: iteration, kickoff and stand-up meetings, demos, retrospectives, and much more

• Foster team development: co-location, self-organization, cross-functional roles, and how to bring the customer aboard

• Facilitate technical tasks and processes: testing, refactoring, continuous integration, simple design, collective code ownership, and pair programming

• Act as an effective coach, learning to engage the community and promote learning

• Integrate “clusters” of agile practices that work exceptionally well together

Agile Adoption Patterns will help you whether you’re planning your first agile project, trying to improve your next project, or evangelizing agility throughout your organization. This actionable advice is designed to work with any agile method, from XP and Scrum to Crystal Clear and Lean. The practical insights will make you more effective in any agile project role: as leader, developer, architect, or customer.

Foreword xxiii & xxvi

Preface xxvii

Acknowledgments xxxiii

About the Author xxxvii

Part 1: Thoughts about Software Development 1

Chapter 1: Learning Is the Bottleneck 3

Chapter 2: Personal Agility for Potent Agile Adoption 13

Part 2: Crafting an Agile Adoption Strategy 21

Chapter 3: Business Value 23

Chapter 4: Smells 29

Chapter 5: Adopting Agile Practices 37

Part 3: The Pattern Catalog 53

Chapter 6: The Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption 55

Chapter 7: Goal 61

Chapter 8: Cycle 65

Part 3.1: Feedback Practices 69

Chapter 9: Iteration 71

Chapter 10: Kickoff Meeting 77

Chapter 11: Backlog 81

Chapter 12: Planning Poker 87

Chapter 13: Stand-Up Meeting 93

Chapter 14: Done State 99

Chapter 15: Demo 103

Chapter 16: Retrospective 109

Chapter 17: Release Often 115

Chapter 18: Co-Located Team 119

Chapter 19: Self-Organizing Team 125

Chapter 20: Cross-Functional Team 131

Chapter 21: Customer Part of Team 137

Chapter 22: Evocative Document 143

Chapter 23: User Story 149

Chapter 24: Use Case 153

Chapter 25: Information Radiator 157

Part 3.2: Technical Practices 161

Chapter 26: Automated Developer Tests 163

Chapter 27: Test-Last Development 173

Chapter 28: Test-First Development 177

Chapter 29: Refactoring 183

Chapter 30: Continuous Integration 189

Chapter 31: Simple Design 197

Chapter 32: Functional Tests 203

Chapter 33: Collective Code Ownership 219

Chapter 34: Pair Programming 223

Part 3.3: Supporting Practices 229

Chapter 35: Coach 231

Chapter 36: Engage the Community 235

Chapter 37: Reading Circle 239

Chapter 38: Workshop 245

Chapter 39: Classroom Training 249

Part 3.4: The Clusters 255

Chapter 40: Agile Iteration 257

Chapter 41: Communication Cluster 263

Chapter 42: Evolutionary Design 269

Chapter 43: Test-Driven Development 277

Chapter 44: Test-Driven Requirements 285

Part 4: Case Studies 293

Chapter 45: BabyCenter 295

Chapter 46: Company X 305

Part 5: Appendices 321

Appendix A: Pattern to Business Value Mappings 323

Appendix B: Pattern-to-Smell Mappings 325

Appendix C: Getting the Most from Agile Practice Patterns 327

Appendix D: Further Reading 331

Bibliography 333

Index 339

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

This book has paid for itself... - 2008-11-24
Reviewer Rating:
I picked this book up about a month ago before kicking off a critical assessment project and it's paid for itself many times over. The numerous tomes in our field often provide hyperbole rather than pragmatic advice you can put into practice. This book helped me not only understand key agile concepts, but explained them in a way that made clear the business value they deliver.

I'd highly recommend this book for anyone seeking to learn more about implementing agile in an organization still relying on the traditional waterfall method.

Relevant to Managers and Technologists - 2009-09-24
Reviewer Rating:
Agile adoption is not a technical problem - it's about people, organizations, processes, and group and individual psychology. Every manager considering allowing or (better yet) championing Agile is already concerned that their technical team is disconnected in some way from what their business needs. Amr uses patterns as the way to communicate business information to technical people in a very logical, analytical way but still manages to capture the management wisdom that needs to be imparted. He walks the team through exercises to identify the business need that will drive the need for change, then identify the symptoms of problems, and finally he lays out a clear path to the practices that should be adopted first to get early wins and build a positive cycle of success.

Very accessible to all audiences in a business that need to understand Agile - I consider it a must read for any organization that I am going to coach.

A nicely written book - 2009-08-25
Reviewer Rating:
A very well written book, focusing on the business value. It appeals to all the members of the agile and "wanna be agile" communities!

Practical Guide to introducing Agile by a Focus on Business Value - 2009-04-08
Reviewer Rating:
Well written and practical way to introduce agile to organizations based on business value. I love the diagrams that list business values (time to market, quality to market, product lifetime) and the corresponding patterns that realize that value most dramatically.

I have used this approach with clients to frame the goals of their agile adoption in terms of what business value they hoped to achieve in their context. This is much more effective than discussions about adopting Agile practices with a vague or non-specific goal to be 100% Agile, 100% Scrum or what have you. The discussion around patterns that support their goals helps to create a strategey for adoption rather than a blanket set of practices to be applied regardless of context or what the client hopes to achieve. This belongs in the bookshelf of those introducing Agile in their organization or other organizations, alongside Fearless Change and Leading Change.

Kindle preview has no content by which to judge suitability for needs. <br /> - 2009-02-27
Reviewer Rating:
Amazon says kindle previews are supposed to be the first chapter, yet this book doesnt even get half way through the foward. it is all TOC and praise. This is of no help in evaluating a book.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Software Engineering

Sub-Categories:
Software Engineering > Agile Computing