|
|
49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Articulation of Higher Awareness, December 2, 2001
By A Customer
In Agile Software Development, Alistair Cockburn has quietly authored a masterpiece. With extraordinary insightfulness and encompassing perspective, Cockburn writes of fundamental truths around the business of software development, the people and teams involved, and the nature of methodology.This book will give you vocabulary and concepts to communicate what you experience on your projects: what software development is all about, the importance of people and their motivations and traits, the adequacy of communication within your team community, and the appropriateness of your methodology for your context. The first in a series based on the idea that different projects need different methodologies, and that focusing on communication and community is more relevant than focusing on process, the book is primarily concerned with what *is* methodology - and what identifies agile methodology, in particular. Cockburn begins with the premise that communication is never perfect or complete - and therefore one task of your methodology, which amounts to the set of conventions your team follows, is to ensure that communications are optimal for the purposes at hand. But what are the purposes at hand? Cockburn adeptly uses the metaphor of game theory to accurately characterize software development as "a cooperative game of invention and communication", whose primary goal is to deliver useful, working software, and whose secondary goal is to prepare for continued play. In so doing he reflects thoughtfully on the characterization of software as engineering, and derides the characterization of software as model-building - observing, thankfully, that building models is not the purpose of the game. The purpose of the game is delivering software. This characterization frames the book's discussion, which builds in well-considered progression from people, to teams, to methodology, to agility. In a chapter about people, Cockburn stands upon the shoulders, and extends the vision, of giants such as Weinberg, and DeMarco and Lister, finding that people factors predict project outcome much more reliably than choice of process or technology. His treatment of people's motivations, in particular, is the most enlightened to be found outside the leadership literature. That people participate in teams leads to the next chapter's thorough analysis of communication within teams, and examination of teams as communities. Cockburn implies that a project's rate of progress is a function of how long it takes information to get from one person's mind to another. Through comparison of different seating arrangements and communication modalities, he substantiates the implication and raises the issue of the permanence of communication. To the extent that the people on a team pull in the same direction, they form an effective community defined by "amicability" and "citizenship" - words and definitions provided by Cockburn that are a welcome addition to our vocabulary. Coordinating a team's activity is the task of a methodology, which is subject of the book's final three chapters. The first of the three lays out a conceptual model of what methodology *is*, in terms of elements of methodology and relationships between elements. It goes on to define the scope of a methodology, and to put forth terms, such as "weight" and "tolerance", that can be used to describe a methodology. It addresses how to publish a methodology. Then Cockburn discusses a number of principles involved in the design of methodologies, and consequences of those principles. Of particular interest is a model for characterizing projects, on which to base the selection of a methodology for a project. This chapter concludes with an examination of Extreme Programming in light of the vocabulary and concepts Cockburn develops. The second of the three methodology chapters discusses agile methodologies, and what identifies them. Included are recommendations for documentation, an interesting contrast of open-source development to commercial development (it's a different kind of game), and a prescriptive technique for selecting and adapting a methodology on a project. Along the way Cockburn suggests a good definition of software development project success (at least, from a methodological perspective), and thankfully debunks some of the broken thinking that is prevalent in our industry today -specifically, around outsourced overseas development. The last of the three methodology chapters introduces Cockburn's own family of methodologies, the Crystal Methodologies, each of which corresponds to a particular space within the project characterization model. Three appendices are included, of such significant content that they can hardly be considered an afterthought. The first discusses The Agile Software Development Manifesto, a product of seventeen advocates of "lightweight" development processes who gathered in early 2001 to discuss what they might have in common. Cockburn was party to the meeting and the manifesto, and in the first appendix provides his own report on the meeting and interpretation of the group's values and principles. The second appendix excerpts and annotates earlier works, of other authors, that are significantly germane to Cockburn's arguments. One of these is by Peter Naur (of Backus-Naur Form), titled "Programming as Theory Building". In the vein of communication, Cockburn writes that "Using Naur's ideas, the designer's job is not to pass along the design, but to pass along the theories driving the design. The latter goal is more useful and more appropriate." Another excerpt is from The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, a 17th-century Japanese samurai who never wrote software, but whose words apply as equally to software development methodology and tool schools today as they did to martial arts schools in 17th-century Japan. The third and final appendix is a bibliography of 65 entries. Taken as a whole, the chapters and appendices form a seminal book on methodology that promises to have significant influence within our industry. Agile Software Development is an epiphany for the field of software development. Buy it. Read it. Use it. Urge the people on your teams to do likewise, that you may discuss methodology with higher awareness, and adjust yours to be appropriately agile. For, as Alistair writes, "software developers should come to know this material simply as part of being in the profession". Randy Stafford
Chief Architect
IQNavigator
|
by F.H. Krusen
by Alan Mitchell
by Andrew N. Kingsnorth
by John Campbell
See all Editorial Reviews
