From the Editor of Methods & Tools » Books

Lean Agile Software Development

The Editor — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:58:27 +0000

The goal of this book is to propose a vision of Agile software development that goes behind the current practices, more specifically Scrum, to integrate the principles of Lean development. To achieve this objective, the authors draw on their own experience in Agile consulting.

The book starts with a presentation of Agile and Lean principles. The second part explains how Lean adoption can improve the usage of Scrum with an interesting table comparing Scrum and Lean accompanied by a list of practices to avoid. It devotes specific chapters to topics like release planning, visual control, quality assurance, product coordination and architecture. A final part is dedicated to more insight in the Lean approach. The book is pleasant to read. Each chapter has an abstract and the beginning and a summary at the end with some questions and further reading recommendations.

Besides the sometimes-annoying references to the authors consulting firm, this book provides interesting material on specific aspects of Agile software development projects at an enterprise level. Its main difference with other books on the same topic is for me the treatment of the management aspects of software development as the authors make their point for a stronger management role and intervention in Agile projects. This book will therefore bring more benefits to project and development managers that work for large organizations where the control aspect is important and the words “self-organizing teams” could be a serious “career limitation” move.

Reference

“Lean-Agile Software Development”, Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver and James R. Trott, Addison-Wesley, 262 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-53289-3

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Quotes

“What we need is a new attitude about process and how to manage process. Processes must be designed to assist the team in achieving management’s goal. Processes help the team get its job done: they represent accountability among team members about how they will work. [...] Is this possible? Yes! Lean provides the principles we need to do this. And we will not follow these principles blindly.”

“We often think of software as the end goal. But it is not. Software is a means to an end – a way of getting value to the customer.”

“Agile project management done in isolation violates the Lean principle of optimizing the whole. [...] There are other alternatives to Scrum, including Crystal, Feature-Driven Development and Kanban software development. They are good and they address specific challenges for teams. However, they, like Scrum, do not entirely address the bigger picture. By themselves, they do not address the entire value stream, which is what is needed.”

“While Scrum works well at the team level, using it as the primary method to guide Agility at the enterprise level has severe challenges.”

“Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle define the Daily Meeting as composed only of team members, explicitly removing management from it – and subtly implying management is not accountable for deliverables.”

“Scrum works by exposing inadequacies or dysfunctions within an organization’s product and development practices. [...] The Scrum community generally concedes that about three in four of organizations implementing Scrum will not succeed in getting the benefits from it that they hoped for. The explanation is that many organizations change Scrum in order to accommodate the inadequacies or dysfunctions of the organization rather than solving their organizational problems. The implication is that Scrum gives them the tools to see but not to change.”

The Economics of Iterative Software Development

The Editor — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:37:47 +0000

When you start reading this book, you will quickly understand that the authors are affiliated with IBM. This is nothing wrong per se, but this seems to influence too much the vision that the book proposes, ignoring approaches proposed by others. Including “iterative” in the title seems here to be only a marketing trick used to make it catchy. They don’t give you a precise definition of “iterative”, saying rather than it is a “modern method” (Tom Gilb was talking about evolutionary development 30 years ago) and that iterative management is result-based rather than activity-based. The difference between iteration and increment is not discussed. The IBM bias is visible when they state for instance that RUP is a “well accepted benchmark of modern iterative process”.

The beginning of the book describes the development process, providing a two pages description of COCOMO in the middle of it, and proposes way to improve it. The solutions focus mainly on an initial emphasis on architecture and modeling (naturally it is UML with some tools) associated with the recommendation for code reuse or component integration. I was hoping to find more useful material in the part dealing with “practical measurement for software engineering”. However the material is arranged around RUP phases and I found only one metric formula in the 50 pages devoted to this topic. There is some interesting content in this part, but it is only very high level.

This short book is close to be only a white paper for the IBM Rational Unified Process approach. It contains some interesting material for a software development manager wanting to think about introducing metrics, but its biased IBM approach and lack of directly useful content make it awkward for the experienced development professionals.

Reference

“The Economics of Iterative Software Development”, Walker Royce, Kurt Bittner and Mike Perrow, Addison-Wesley, 171 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-50935-2

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Quotes

The most significant way to improve economic results is usually to achieve a software solution with the minimum amount of human-generated material. Our experience shows that managing scope and raising the level of abstraction through component-based technology and service-oriented architectures are the highest leverage techniques that make a difference

External stakeholders, including customers and users, cannot expect initial deliveries to perform up to specifications, to be complete, to be fully reliable, or to have end-target levels of quality or performance.

Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

The Editor — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:56:18 +0000

Object orientation (OO) is not a trendy concept these days, but it hasn’t certainly lost it values. The purpose of this book is to integrate the development of object oriented software with the test-driven development (TDD) approach, more specifically in Java. It starts with an introduction to TDD and the tools (Junit, jMock2) that will be used. It describes then in detail the TDD process that is then illustrated by a large example. The book ends with more software testing topics like tests smells or tests readability. A final part is dedicated to special aspects of testing like persistence, threads and asynchronous code.

The book could be read from start to end or be used as a reference book. In the preface, the authors say that the book is intended for developers with professional experience and some first knowledge of TDD. It really goes far beyond “toy” examples that you can find in programming learning books. The content is a balanced mix of concepts, examples and diagrams that makes it easy to read. Besides what could be considered “catchy” acronyms (OO+TDD), this book is an excellent reference on how to design and program software (the authors use the nice concept of “growing” software). I will consider it a must for anyone programming in Java, but I will also recommend it to people programming in other languages, as the thinking process could be applied in other contexts and with similar tools.

Reference: “Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests”, Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce, Addison-Wesley, 358 pages, ISBN 978-0-321-50362-7

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Quotes

“What if software wasn’t “made”, like we make a paper airplane – finish folding it and fly it away? What if, instead, we treated software more like a valuable, productive plant, to be nurtured, pruned, harvested, fertilized, and watered? Traditional farmers know how to keep plants productive for decades or even centuries. How would software development be different if we treated our programs the same way?”

“As John Gall wrote in “The Systems Bible: The Beginner’s Guide to Systems Large and Small”: a complex systems that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works”.

“Sometimes we find it difficult to write a test for some functionality we want to add to our code. In our experience, this usually means that our design can be improved – perhaps the class is too tightly coupled to its environment or does not have clear responsibilities. When this happens, we first check whether it’s an opportunity to improve our code, before working around the design by making the test more complicated or using more sophisticated tools. We’ve found that the qualities that make an object easy to test also make our code responsive to change.”

Leading Lean Software Development – Results are not the Point

The Editor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:57:39 +0000

What fascinates me the most in the Lean software development approach is the quality of the people that support it. The Poppendieck are not an exception to this rule. Their book achieves the seemingly contradictory goals of being very insightful but still easy and captivating to read. It might be however easier to have the right flow when you are a Lean adept ;o)

The book starts with a chapter on systems thinking that takes also examples outside the software development world like Southwest Airlines. The next chapter on technical excellence is dedicated to a panorama of the software development approaches. Chapter 3 is kind of my favorite part of the book, extracting process management knowledge from the history of the construction of the Empire State Building, a project that took only one year to be completed. Chapter four presents the tools for improvement. Finally, the last part of the book is dedicated the people and leadership aspects of Lean.

The structure of the book makes it very pleasant to read, mixing the presentation of lean concepts with case studies and short personal stories. It is definitively a book that I will recommend to every software developer and manager…. and wish that every software developer and manager had read. Even if you think that Lean is not for you or you are a Toyota owner, this book provides a mind-opening text about what the values of software development and organizations should be.

Reference: “Leading Lean Software Development – Results are not the Point”, Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Addison-Wesley, 278 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-62070-5

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Debug It!

The Editor — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:40:40 +0000

This book provides a structured approach that will help programmers to identify and remove bugs in code. It is based on a four steps process: Reproduce, Diagnose, Fix, Reflect. For each activity, the author provides practical material on how perform it. The second part gives a higher vision of the debugging process and deal with topics like communicating with users or prioritizing bugs treatment. Finally, the book discusses special situations and the relationship between bugs and other areas of software development (source control, build, etc.).

The book is easy to read and the material is presented in a very structured way with different “viewpoints” that help to understand the content. Besides the main text where important concepts are put in evidence, real life cases shows how things happen in the real world. There are also some “Joe asks…” sections where the author answer pertinent questions on the current topic.

With my many years of experience in supporting and debugging large existing enterprise systems, I have to say that Paul Butcher summarize and structure all the knowledge (and more) that I have, sometimes painfully, accumulated during this activity. This is therefore an excellent book that I will recommend to everybody that is involved in software development in general and maintenance activities specifically.

Reference: “Debug It!”, Paul Butcher, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 214 pages, ISBN 978-1934356289

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Agile Project Management

The Editor — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:47:06 +0000

The fact that this book is already at his second edition after a first publication in 2004 says something about its value. In one of his definition of Agile, Jim Highsmith says, “Agility is the ability to balance flexibility and stability”. I will say that his book balances nicely high level thinking and a pragmatic approach. The book provides a framework for running agile projects and gives also insight in some more neglected related topics like managing projects portfolios or measuring the success of Agile projects.

The author starts by defining what Agility is and emphasizes that Agile is about “delivering value over meeting constraints”. The book describes the Agile Project Management (APM) framework, discussing its values and presenting the phases (Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and Close). The core values of the APM are:
* Delivering Value over Meeting Constraints
* Leading the Team over Managing Tasks
* Adapting to Change over Conforming to Plans.
All these aspects are covered with both a high level vision (after all values are values), but also by describing daily project activities: Key points that will help you understand the author message are put in evidence. Example: A coaching leader’s attitude is reflected in the question “How can I help you deliver results?” The micro-manager’s attitude is reflected in the question, “Why isn’t task 412 done yet?”

The final parts of the book deal with topics related to Agile project management: scaling, project portfolio management, measuring performance and fostering innovation. This is definitely a book that I will recommend to every people involved in project management, agile or not. I always think that learning Agile practices should be preceded by understanding Agile values. This book provides insightful material for values and practices.

Related web sites:
* Jim Highsmith Web site
* Agile Project Leadership Network

Reference: “Agile Project Management”, Second Edition, Jim Highsmith, Addison-Wesley, 392 pages

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The Process of Software Architecting

The Editor — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:41:36 +0000

This book presents the influence of architecture in the software development process. The interesting aspect of this book is that is it a thoroughly presentation of the architecture role in the software development activities, not only at initial analytic stage but also at the subsequent tasks like software testing or configuration management. The book is very well structured and is certainly an excellent text book for students or for developers that are interested in getting an extensive presentation of software architecture. What I missed in the book is the presence of more “real life user stories” examples that could relate the different topics presented in the book. There is a case study used to implementing the practices, but it remains abstract to me. People looking to have more insight of what is “enough architecture” will not find some ideas on how to get the answer in this book.

Website of the book: http://www.processofsoftwarearchitecting.com/

Reference: “The Process of Software Architecting”, Peter Eeles and Peter Cripps, Addison-Wesley, 405 pages,

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Domain-Specific Modeling

The Editor — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:38:16 +0000

Domain-specific modeling (DSM) is an approach articulated around three elements: a specific modeling language, code generation and a domain framework. The book authors work for a company that has been proposing a DSM tool since the last century. This make them first-hand experts on the topic, but you have also to remind which side they are when they talk about DSM compared to other approaches. The authors are conscious of this and discuss it openly, so that the reader can be aware of the situation. This being said, this book is an excellent and convincing presentation of what is domain-specific modeling, what it is not and how it relates to generic modeling approaches like UML. It contains more than 100 pages of real case studies showing how you can use DSM in different contexts (embedded software, insurance, etc). Finally, a final part guides you in details through the different steps needed to create a DSM solution. This part contains an important decision guide that will allow you to evaluate if your domain is suited for a DSM effort.

The book is very well written and is certainly a must read for every software developer who could be involved in the development of software that has some “product” attributes, that is software projects that involve repeated development efforts based on a common domain knowledge. It will also allow you to think and understand more deeply what is modeling and how you can reuse the initial investments in understanding the domain and creating the first products.

The website of the book is http://www.dsmbook.com/

Reference: “Domain-Specific Modeling – Enabling Full Code Generation”, Steven Kelly and Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, John Wiley & Sons, 427 pages

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Stand Back and Deliver

The Editor — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:43:39 +0000

This is a book about leadership. This is not an easy topic to discuss in a book, but this one gives you some tools that will help you to assess situations and act on them. I think that the authors give a very good definition of leadership when they explain their title: “Standing back does not imply abdicating all responsibility, but rather requires leaders to perform a careful balancing act between stepping back to let the right people in the organization do their thing and stepping up to provide steering when the team has strayed off course”. The deliver part exists because the most important measure of success is defined as delivering value to the business.

The first chapter presents the key principles that will be discussed in the book: Purpose – Collaborate – Delivery – Decisions. The chapter about purpose presents a model that allows classifying activities or businesses function according to their market differentiation and mission critical dimensions. The chapter on collaboration emphasizes the importance of letting the people succeed. In the delivery part, the authors propose a model to assess projects using their uncertainty and complexity dimensions. The next chapter exposes ideas on how and when to make decisions. After discussing all these principles, the authors offer you some hints on how to start putting them in practice to change your organization. Finally, a last chapter offers a short summary of all the tools and models discussed in the book. All the concepts are supported by many cases that show how the issues and ideas discussed relate to practical situations.

Despite grouping material from four different authors, this book has a good cohesion and provides a very smooth reading experience. It is certainly recommended to everyone that has to solve business problems through projects in organizations. Reading it, I was even thinking that it contains a lot of very good material that you can apply to your own personal development and projects.

Reference: “Stand Back and Deliver”, Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little, Kent McDonald, Addison-Wesley, 162 pages

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Agile Coaching

The Editor — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:25:37 +0000

There was a time when software developers worked with consultants that will do things for their company or teach some technical knowledge. Agile approaches have brought forward another type of people: coaches. According to Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley, a coach doesn’t tell you what to do, rather she shows you how she thinks you might do things and hope that it will help you to improve your situation. She leads by example. It is not easy to write a book on this type of topic. The authors recognize this situation and manage to achieve a good balance between general advice and practical usage reports.

The first part of the book is concentrated on the basics of coaching and communicating in software project. The software development curricula are often weak on “people” skills and you are not always lucky to find the right person as a supervisor when you get out of school. I think I was lucky, thank you Claude ;o) The second part goes through the different activities of a typical Agile project (daily meeting, user stories definition, planning, etc.) and discuss how coach can help a project team to achieve its goals. Each chapter has a final checklist and the book is also full of “personal stories” from the authors that enhance the theoretical advice, applying it on real situations.

Although the title of the book and some of its content might make you think that its value is limited to an agile context, I will recommend this book to every person that has some supervision function in software development organizations and to every developer who believe than acquiring additional “people” skill might improve its work environment. Just changing the way you talk with colleagues could lead to having more sunnier days at the office.

Disclaimer: Rachel Davies has been a (valuable) contributor to Methods & Tools since 2005

Reference: “Agile Coaching”, Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 250 pages, to be released August 28, 2009

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Balancing Agility and Discipline

The Editor — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:17:16 +0000

This book was written in 2004 by Barry Boehm and Richard Turner, but the fact that it is already on its 6th reprint tells something about its value. This is a very pragmatic book that tries to put in perspective agile and plan-driven software development approaches. By the way, the funny thing is that the word “waterfall” is rarely mentioned in the book. This may be due to its negative connotation and also to the fact that Barry Boehm favors a spiral approach. The book has also adopted a clever structure with a first “quick-read” part of 150 pages that provide the core of the material and then 100 pages of appendixes to treat some parts more specifically.

After a comparison of agile and plan-driven approaches, the book illustrates its vision of these two processes by presenting two project case studies. It offers also a risk-based approach for making methodology decisions that integrate agile and plan-driven practices. Even the book is not recent, it has the advantage of confronting agile and plan-driven approaches in a relatively objective way. Therefore, it is a very recommended reading for people that want to improve their software development process without wanting necessarily to be a “purist” of a particular approach. It is also a book where people that have already made their choice will be able to consider the “other” software development process with a different view and also gain a better insight on their own strengths and weaknesses.

Reference: “Balancing Agility and Discipline – A Guide for the Perplexed”, Barry Boehm, Richard Turner, Addison Wesley, 265 pages

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Implementing Automated Testing

The Editor — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:52:06 +0000

This book presents a comprehensive treatement of the domain of software testing automation. The first part defines and describes test automation, proposing a business case for automation and discussing the pitfalls that should be avoided. The second part is a roadmap for test automation. It gives six keys for software testing automation payoff:
1. Know your requriments
2. Develop a strategy
3. Test your tools
4. Track progress and adjust
5. Implement the process
6. Put the right people in the process.
Four appendixes complete the book. They provide a process checklist, explain how automation applies to various testing types, disscuss tools evaluation and give a case study.

The fact that the autors have worked with the Defence industry might have affected the way the book was conceived and written: with structure and rigor. The discussions, recommandations, references and tools suggestions apply however to every software testing situation and not only to organization that are strongly process oriented. The aim of the book is to be a guide that can help to implement successfully automated software testing and it certainly achieve its objective.

Reference: “Implementing Automated Testing”, Elfriede Dustin, Thom Garrett & Bernie Gauf, Addison Wesley.

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Agile Testing

The Editor — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:04:01 +0000

Some authors are good at presenting theories but unable to connect them to practice. Other are good at telling stories from the trenches, but without being able to produce an analysis of the situation and propose some solutions. On the less examined domain of agile testing, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory are, luckily for us, presenting a book that covers both the personal experience of being a tester in agile projects and a conceptual vision of the place of quality assurance in software projects. Thus you will find in this book “stories” that comes from past projects and “mind maps” that helps to have a high-level vision of the material of each chapter.

The book offers resource to organize the quality assurance and testing activities in an agile project. It explains also the relationship between test automation and agility. It provides also a part dedicated to the chronicle of the agile testing activities during project life, showing how every member of the team could contribute to quality.

I think however that the more interesting contribution of the book is Testing Quadrants. This concept classifies testing activities depending on their focus (technology or business) and their intent (supporting the team or validating the product). Adding an agile perspective to the original work of Brian Marick, the authors provide resources and examples for each quadrant to make sure that you will cover all the aspects of testing for your project.

This book is certainly a very valuable resource for every people involved in software testing, even if this is not in an agile project. It will also be valuable for ScrumMasters and project managers that have to think on how to integrate the testing activities in their projects.

Disclaimer: Lisa Crispin has been a (valuable) contributor to Methods & Tools since 2003

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Confessions of a Serial Product Owner

The Editor — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:51:38 +0000

Anna Fors gave me the opportunity to host “Confessions of a Serial Product Owner” on DevAgile.com. This free e-book is a short guide to a business person aiming for becoming an excellent Scrum product owner. A further iteration of the experiences of Anna as a product owner will be published in the next edition of Methods & Tools.

Thinking Tools for Scaling Lean and Agile

The Editor — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:42:43 +0000

This book from Craig Larman and Bas Vodde is a classic example of the fact that it is better to teach somebody to fish than to give him fish. It emphasizes that it is important to “be agile” more than to “do agile”. Approaches like Scrum or Lean are more frameworks to think about continuous improvement than tools that should be applied blindly like cooking recipes. The book will therefore tell you that “large-scale Scrum is Scrum” or that lean is not just kanban or waste reduction. The first part of the book is focused on thinking tools (systems thinking, lean thinking, queueing theory) that are presented with software project management related examples. Those who are looking for practical advice should not believe that the book remains only at the conceptual level. The authors distill many “try…” and “avoid…” recommendations that will help you implement agile and lean ideas in your organization. The second part of the book is devoted to organizational tools and the final chapter proposes frameworks to adapt Scrum to larger contexts.

This book is a must for those who believe that software development project management goes beyond the simple application of “silver bullet” recipes. It is a rich source of both thinking and practical content that is well suited for non-linear reading. A very good “Scrum primer” chapter at the end of the book will provide an introduction for those who are not familiar with this approach and a large number of “recommended readings” items will allow readers to explore more in details each concept.

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Global Project Management

The Editor — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:32:44 +0000

In a global world, software development projects concern more and more people working in various locations or coming from different organizations and culture. Managing these projects requires thinking beyond the traditional project management techniques to integrate these additional global dimensions and deal with the new issues that they create. This book helps project managers to think about this situation by proposing a detailed framework dealing with the team, communication, organization, tools and techniques dimensions of global projects. Every chapter has a good balance between conceptual material and real life examples. Many checklists and models are proposed to help assessing the global aspects of specific situations. The author invites also the reader to think how the current topic is handled in his organization. Finally, the book provides many pointers to additional literature that could help a reader to get more knowledge on a particular topic. More information on the global project management framework can be obtained on http://www.globalprojectmanagement.org

The book has received in 2008 the Project Management Institute (PMI) David Cleland Project Management Literature Award that recognizes the best project management literature published during the previous calendar year.

Gower Publishing, ISBN: 978-0566087066, Hardcover: 308 pages

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Ajax In Practice

The Editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:40:35 +0000

This book by Dave Crane, Bear Bibeault and Jord Sonneveld aims to be of a second-generation Ajax book. It should go beyond just explaining the technology and explore in details the different client-side Ajax technologies and show what you can do with them. The target audience is a developer that has already a background of developing web applications and a basic knowledge of JavaScript. I can say that the book achieves its goals and provides practical concepts and code excerpts that can be readily used. For every topic that is discussed in the book, there is a detailed code example that shows how to use it in practice. I like also the fact that the specific goal of important lines are put in evidence in the code examples.

The book is divided in two parts. The first part contains four chapters that present the basic concepts of Ajax. After an introduction, it discusses the various communications techniques like Json or XML. A chapter is then dedicated to object-oriented JavaScript, that the authors present as a must to build scalable Ajax code. Finally, the book takes a closer look at the different JavaScript libraries (Prototype, Dojo and JQuery) used for Ajax applications.

The second part presents the various practices that could be used in client-side programming and are related to Ajax, either directly or indirectly: events, data entry and validation, navigation, drag-and-drop, usability, state management. Each topic is clearly explained in a dedicated chapter. A chapter is also dedicated to integrating outside API like Yahoo! or Google maps. A last chapter is dedicated to a sample mash-up application.

Source code and sample chapters for this book can be find on http://www.manning.com/crane2/

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Book: UML 2.0 in Action – A Project Based Tutorial

The Editor — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:41:51 +0000

This book from Henriette Baumann, Philippe Baumann and Patrick Graessle is a very good introduction to the power of modeling with UML. After an initial presentation of the basic principles of modeling and UML, the book presents the diagrams used to model both business and software views of systems. The final part is devoted to the models that can be used for system integration.

All the diagrams are presented through the same case study. This book does not claim to be a detailed presentation of UML. It achieves with its case study to reach a good balance between providing enough knowledge to be used in real life situations, without being lost in features that are rarely used. The nicest aspect of this book is that it is not only a technical manual on UML diagrams, but it provides also valuable information and tips on how to create and verify them, by providing questions that will help you to conduct your analysis. This is a book that I will recommend as a reference for developers performing system analysis and design activities. It is also a good practical book for students that follow an UML course.

Packt Publishing ISBN: 1904811558, Paperback: 248 pages

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Managing Iterative Software Development Projects

The Editor — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:15:54 +0000

As agile software development approaches are more and more adopted in software development organizations, the title of this book from Kurt Bittner and Ian Spence seems to be right on the target. The book contains two major parts. The first gives an overview of iterative project management. It defines the concepts, discuss controlling and gives tips to assess your readiness for iterative project management. The second is a more detailed walk-through to the planning and management of iterations at different levels. It provides also information on how to assess the results of iterations, discuss the relation between iterative project management and project scales. The last chapter is dedicated to the information needed to start your first iterative project. Finally, appendices provide material on use case development (the topic of a former book from the same authors), templates, checklists and an example of 50 pages.

The process behind the book is widely based on the RUP approach; thus practitioners of a “pure” agile approach could be disoriented by the content. However, this book contains very valuable and pragmatic material about managing iterative project management that could be used in any iterative context. It will also provide good transition information towards an iterative process for project managers that operate in a more traditional organization. With 600 pages, it is a not an easy book that is quickly digested. It will nevertheless helps you to improve you grasp on iterative project management, whether you read the book sequentially or you pick sections according to your current project management questions.

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Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

The Editor — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:09:38 +0000

As a software developer, you know that one of the critical period in a project is when you try to make integrate your code in the overall application and push it towards the final user. It is sometimes a long process that you would like to accelerate so that you could obtain a quicker feedback on the quality of your code. This book written by Paul Duvall, with Steve Matyas and Andrew Glover, will help you improve the way you build and deliver software.

After a initial presentation of the continuous integration (CI) concepts and objectives, the content of the book goes far beyond the simple “continuous build” aspect to cover all disciplines concerned by CI: risk management, configuration management, database evolution, software testing, inspections, deployment. It is clear that CI is just not installing a suite of tools, but is mainly changing software development practices and process. Each chapter is well structured with practical examples related to real life situations. The book reach also nicely the objective of maintaining a balance between a somewhat tools- and language-neutral position, but still giving enough practical advice so that you could quickly adapt the advice to your own software development environment. Final appendixes give valuable information on CI resources and evaluating available CI tools.

Finally, you can get more and updated information on continuous integration and download book’s chapter two from the Web site associated to the book: http://www.integratebutton.com

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