Customer Reviews

The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software (Pragmatic Programmers)

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Over the last ten years, I've been working with teams with different degrees of commitment to the agile process, ranging from non-existing to quite strong. I was looking for a text that summarises agile methodology to help me formalise and articulate my own experiences, and of course to enhance my knowledge of some of the finer points of agile practices. I have to admit that this book did not meet my expectations. The first eighty pages up to chapter six are mostly about project inception and read like a prolonged introduction. From chapter six onwards, the author finally comes to the point and discusses the core concepts of agile processes, so the book does get better with increasing page numbers. Unfortunately, Scrum isn't discussed at all, instead Kanban is introduced in chapter eight. The discussion of typical technical processes, such as refactoring, TDD, and continuous integration is compacted into several brief chapters at the end of the book.

The writing style is very informal; the author uses a conversational tone throughout the book. Almost every page contains illustrations, which makes it an easy and quick read. The style of the book is comparable to the Head First books. It left me with the the impression that I sat in an all-day meeting where someone said a lot of intelligent things to which everyone else agreed. Unfortunately, not many of these things seemed radically new or thought-provoking, so I fear I won't remember many of them next month. Of course, this may be entirely my own fault. I prefer a more formal, concise, old-school language. I also prefer dense and meaty text books with lots of diagrams, numbers and formulas. In return, I can dispense with stick figures, pictograms, and even with Master Sensei (a guru character used in the book). I feel that a lot of the deeper and more complex issues of agile project management have simply been left out.

To be fair, it must be mentioned that I probably do not fall into the target group for which this book was written. It is more appropriate as an introductory text for people who are new to agile project management, or even new to the entire business of project management. Think "trial lesson" and "starter course".

I knew I was going to like The Agile Samurai from the first page:

"Agile is a way of developing software that reminds us that although computers run the code, it's people who create and maintain it."

Jonathan Rasmussen, the Other JR, has written a great, short, to-the-point book about how to move a project to agile. From the beginning "Deliver something of value every week" to the Agile Principles sprinkled throughout the book, such as "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams" to the conversations between the student and the Sensei, you can learn how to move your project from where it is to agile.

Some pieces I particularly like are:

1. All of Chapter 4, Seeing the Big Picture, where Jonathan suggests we need an elevator pitch for our project. I'm stealing this idea right away.

2. Chapter 8: Agile Planning, Dealing with Reality. After a humorous side trip with Murphy and his Law, Jonathan introduces us to burndown, burnup, and team velocity charts.

3. Chapter 15: Continuous Integration: Making it Production-Ready. What if you only had one hour to deploy your product. Could you? Jonathan walks you through what you need to do to make the code production ready.

Jonathan has great advice about how to know how agile you are:

"And don't forget. It's not about "being" agile. It's about building great products and delivering world class service to your customers."

This is a great book. If you are thinking of starting an agile journey, do yourself a favor and get this book. You will not be sorry.

What this book isn't: boring theory about agile methodology and history of "how did it all start". This book is neither source of THE secret of agile software development.

What this book is: a great and valuable source of reality connected simple facts that would allow you to re-evaluate how you build your software. Inception Deck is a great tool to kick off a project. Project planning and execution from agile point of view and with developers in mind are chapters that logically explain how to address everyday issues on traditional projects. This book is about achieving targets by going with simplicity.

When it comes to books on programming, some of my favourite are ones that leave you with practical advice and guidance that is drawn directly from the trenches of applying and refining the concepts. The pragmatic bookshelf is indicative of this style of writing, and I often do not hesitate to recommend lots of their books to people that I work with.

The bookshelf now has claim to another great book that is written by someone that I once had the honour of working with. The Agile Samurai is a great book that comes straight from the trenches of working, refinining, and applying agile practices. Jonathan Rasmusson ("JR"), is a master programmer, iteration manager, and general jack of all software trades. I would be able to recommend the book alone just based on the content that is within the pages, but I can recommend it even stronger knowing that JR has condensed into its pages the dissemination of practices, war wounds, and nuggets that could only have been gleaned by someone who has proven each of the techniques on projects of all sizes.

I gave the following recommendation in the opening sections of the book:

This book was written with the insight and clarity that can only come from a person who has proved these techniques in the trenches. I have read many books on agile software development; this is by far the most engaging, easy to read, and just plain fun of them all. Get ready to sharpen that sword!

For fun, you may also want to check out the awesome Bruce Lee promotional video, that JR put together for the book (it is hilarious).

Enjoy sharpening the sword!!

JP Boodhoo

Software Artist

Develop With Passion®

Others have already done a good job outlining the content so I won't repeat that here.

I make my living helping people by teaching Scrum Courses and helping organizations transition to Agile. I see alot of books that help to learn Agile. This has become my new first choice.

Why:

1) The writing style does a good job of mixing stories, pictures and everything else we know that help simplify learning and increase understanding.

2) The book uses humour well making it alot more fun. Difficult topics shouldn't be boring to read about.

3) At a recent client there were alot of questions around Story Points and Planning Poker. I handed them the relevant chapter of this book. Lightbulbs went off and team members understood.

To me the greatest testimonial was several team members after reading about Story Points went and purchased the book.

Caveat Emptor I recieved a free copy of the book.

Reading The Agile Samurai, I felt like I was sitting with the author over a cup of coffee or a mug of beer, learning good ways to plan and develop good software products. The book has a fun and conversational style at the same time as it delivers serious lessons about software projects. The illustrations aren't there just for fun (though they are amusing), they help to quickly explain the concepts.

Though I've been working on agile teams for 10 years and read countless books on the subject, I was surprised to find some tools and ideas in here that are new to me. For example, I'd never heard of the "Inception Deck", ten questions and exercises to get your software project off to the right start. It looks like an excellent approach. I also like the idea of creating a "product box" to focus on what's compelling for your customers and on the benefits of your product.

One thing I appreciate about The Agile Samurai is how the author incorporates ideas from many disciplines, such as Lean. Even more valuable are the many anecdotes from the author's experience. One theme I found in the book is the need to deal with reality, and it's helpful to have real-world examples.

I particularly enjoy the little conversations between the "Master Sensei and the aspiring warrior" that wrap up each chapter. You had the same questions the aspiring warrior asks! This is a fun way to explore the confusing aspects of agile development.

If you're new to agile, you might as well know the truth right from the start, and this book is grounded in reality. Yes, high-level estimates ARE guesses, as the author says, "usually really bad, overly-optimistic ones". Meet the Cone of Uncertainty! But the author gives us a way to estimate to acknowledge all this but still help us plan.

Here's one of my favorite paragraphs in the book:

Just don't be strong-armed or bullied into committing something you and the team can't deliver. That's not doing anyone any favors. And this collaboration thing has to be two-way. Just be honest, and tell them what it's going to take. [The Agile Samurai, p. 148]

This book really will help you deliver something of value every week. It covers many critical techniques in a surprisingly comprehensive way, giving the reader suggestions for additional reading. Agile newbies will learn accurate and useful information about everything from XP practices to Kanban, as well as where to learn more about all that. The author puts agile concepts together to come up with practical advice, such as how to create a visual workspace.

In my view, the book ends with the best possible advice: "Don't worry about being agile". The author gives you many tools and techniques, and prepares the reader (or "aspiring warrior") to figure out what is best for that individual and that project. We shouldn't worry about being "agile", we should indeed aim to build great products and deliver great service to our customers. To paraphrase the author, get out there and start reading this book, then get out there and start doing it!

I really liked this book for three reasons. First, it covers a broad range of agile topics at a high level, and explains them clearly. After reading this book you will be well prepared for other books that might dive into each practice more specifically in depth. Second, for people new to agile methods, this book is an easy read, with a diagram and an analogy on every page. These are powerful tools for helping inject the knowledge into the minds of those learning agile methods for the first time. This leads me to my third reason for loving this book. As an agile mentor myself, this book has become a toolbox of good ideas for explaining agile methods. Everyone is different, and a lot of times you need to explain things differently to different people. This book has some great ways of explaining agile, how it works, and why it works. Of course, the easiest way would be to simply recommend the book, which I most certainly do!

This was a book that was a eye opener on how the Agile process works behind the scenes from the business concept to the delivery of the end product.

Agile isn't a simple read but JR brought his extensive knowledge and on job experiences and made it easy to understand using diagrams, charts and examples on almost every page. There are also a number of tools within this book that will assist your team in having a successful project.

Reading this book gives a better understanding of what other parties within the Agile team will bring to assist in the final outcome of the end product.

If you're new or a seasoned veteran to Agile it's a book I would highly recommend.

This informal and diagram-full book is perfect for beginners who are seeking hands-on, practical advise on how to run their projects, starting today!

It provides the reader with great techniques and tips that can be applied to any agile methodology, Scrum, Crystal, Kanban or anything else you're trying out.

Definitely recommend!

Engaging, concise and practical book on everything that makes project execution and product development agile. The book has a wide scope, and given its easily digestible size, it's not comprehensive in all the areas it covers. In return it delivers a holistic view on everything that happens (or should happen) from the moment an idea is born, to the moment you need to add a new feature to the next version of a product.

Part 2: Agile Project Inception. This is the most important part of the book, simply because it addresses the most important part of any initiative: inception. The author collected many ideas and principles on how to start a project in a right way from many different sources and wrapped them in Agile principles. In my experience (and it's not that uncommon), the inception phase is the one that bleeds the most in many ill-conceived and -executed projects. Practically everybody is confused when asked "Elevator Pitch"; they give different and incoherent answers on "Why Are We Here"; and have puzzled looks when asked about stakeholders ("Meet Your Neighbors"). If you have this book for just 30 minutes, read this part and you won't regret it.

Part 3: Agile Project Planning. All the usual suspects are covered here: user stories, estimations, flexibility and burn-down charts. If you're new to the subject, you will get a solid introduction; if you're coming from a long vacation - a quick refresher.

Part 4: Agile Project Execution. The concept explored here is how to deliver something of value every and each iteration. The author did a great job putting it all together and he highlighted main steps of each cycle: analysis, design, development and testing. In addition, there is also a very good explanation on how to weave periodic pulse checks (planning, stand-up, show-case and retrospective meetings) in a life-cycle of every iteration and how to maximize their usefulness.

Part 5: Creating Agile Software. The last part describes to software developers and their managers the key enablers of agile construction phase. Once again no sensationalism here but a solid list of topics: testing, refactoring, TDD and continuous integration.

The one special thing I want to mention and complement the book and the author, is that "Agile Smurai" is free of dogma and doesn't afraid to suggest "Do Whatever Works for You". It's good to see that common sense is still respected, which cannot be said for all Agile books.