Customer Reviews

Agile Software Development Ecosystems

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I found Jim Highsmith's Agile Software Development Ecosystems to be an easier read than his first book Adaptive Software Development.

This one is an overview of the Agile methods and people behind them -- Scrum, Dynamic Systems Development Method, Crystal Clear, Feature Driven Development, Lean Development, Extreme Programming, Adaptive Software Development, Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn, Ken Schwaber, Martin Fowler, Ward Cunningham, himself, Bob Charette -- and descriptions of some projects each method was used on.

None of the method descriptions are in-depth enough to actually do them, but they provide enough information to point you into a direction for further investigation. There is some discussion about Agile principles and values, and Agile methods versus non-Agile methods and Company Culture and Market Style, and some discussion on "how to make your own agile methodology" (or how to adapt one to your company's requirements).

I recommend it.

I found the book a good read, but feel that for trying to "show people the light", it gives sceptics a bit too much ammunition. Craig Larman's "Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide" is better written, of more immediate practical value and more likely to win over the sceptics. Try Larman's book first, then this one for further perspectives...

This book is a good overview of the Agile movement, it's goals and aims, and provides a passable description of several of the methods that have now been labeled as "Agile" as opposed to the lumbering, dinosaur-like methods we have previously used (like the Rational Unified Process and its ancestors).

But that's not why you should buy this book. The best thing about the book are the personal interviews with several of the members of the Agile alliance like Kent Beck, Martin Fowler and Alistair Cockburn. The interviews give you special insight into their personalities that reading their own work won't give you, and helps you place their work in context.

The book is light and very readable (rare for a book on software methodology) and you given its structure you can even put it down for a few days and then come back without losing the thread of what is being discussed. Overall, it's a good "endcap" addition to any software developer's bookshelf right after the books on XP, Crystal and SCRUM.

This book is about "The Agile Movement", if there is such a word.
This books attempts to convey the rationale and "night thoughts" of veterans who have been the route of traditional methodologies and UML and the hard lessons learned.
It is an interesting and eye-opening book along the line of "The Mythical Man Month" that every software architects, program managers and students of software engineering should read. It does holds its concerns well. An analogy from the art world would be fit here:
It is an "Impressionist" software practices resurgent in responding to traditional "Renaissance" software practices in responding to market forces and expectation and to "get the job done", avoiding over-engineered and over modelled process.

Whether Agile movement will be the last say in software process in the next decade is hard to say.
One big problem with software is that there are lack of accountability that other engineering discipline have and does not seem to fit the shoe as well other disciplines.(civil,electrical,etc). No one got drag to court if a software fails miserably. Compare that to a bridge or house collapsing.
So the ultimate question is "What is Software Engineering and does it makes sense?".
I think by reading this book will provoke you into thinking.

A very good starter for Agile practices.
I have been involved in software projects in different roles( programmer, Architect, manager, integrator etc) for 20 years. I felt that MS project never reflected the work hat was actually done, and that if I wanted things to progress, most of the practices I was asked to do were of little help (Heavy documentation, requirements tractability, lots of very detailed design before coding and other fun stuff).
This book gives a good definition for the things that really matter.

Methodology helps your project only if you adjust it to your people, goal and organization. By giving a broad perspective of agile methodologies, this book enables you to select what should work for you.

And - on top of it - I really enjoyed reading it

Jim Highsmith does an excellent job of introducing you to the agile software philosophy. This book includes the basic motivation for agility in the software arena, the foundational philosophies of agile, a review of the top 7 agile approaches being used today (XP, Scrum, DSDM, FDD, ASD, LD, and Crystal), interviews with the leading proponents, and a comparison of Agile versus a more rigorous process-oriented approach.

If you are new to Agile approaches or just looking to fine-tune your current software methodology, this book is an excellent start.

If you're new to Agile methods, this is a great place to start. The overviews and perspectives brought by the interviews provide an excellent introduction. The most useful thing in the book is the section near the end with a discussion of how to shape your own Agile methodology -- it's short, but a really useful set of practical steps.

Unfortunately, the interviews drag on a little bit and also start to feel a little bit repetitive. One or two of the high-level overviews are *so* high-level that you come out of them wondering what a concrete picture of it really looks like, especially since, if you go high enough, several of the approaches start to look the same.

This book basically brings together the major players and their methods, and explores the differences and similarities between them.

Every new paradigm needs a clear, concise, yet thorough synthesis of the ideas surrounding it, and the personalities driving it. For the agile paradigm, this is it. This book is highly underrated in my opinion. If you want to understand agile software development, there's only one book you need to read. That is a major accomplishment. Kudos to Jim Highsmith.

(originally posted on WikiWiki)

If you want to get an overview of the Agile movement and all its offshoots, this is a good book for you. If you want to dig deeper, you should probably read something else.

To me, as a developer, Bob Martin's "Agile Software Development" deserved the first WOW! As a manager, Jim Highsmith's "Agile Software Development Ecosystems" merited that WOW again.