Alan Shalloway

This book was a few blog posts worth of material rehashed over 250 pages, crammed full of business jargon and laid out with prose that's dry as a bone. There are a couple good nuggets in here: the critiques of Scrum's failings are pretty apt, and the notion of limiting the amount of work in progress at a given moment seems useful. But most of the book's recommendations are laid out in as abstract end-states, with little attention paid to how to get an organization of predictably irrational show more humans to adopt these notions, and even littler instruction given on the day-to-day implementation of said ideas. show less

This book covers a set of programming and design practices, that help software developers to deliver better products. Each practices is explored in detail, describing the how and why. This book can be used to improve your programing skills, and define your own set of design and coding guidelines. Among the practices described are "Separate Use from Construction", Encapsulation, Test Driven Design, Continuous Integration, and Refactoring.

I really appreciate it that the authors took the time show more to explain why a practice is so important, and what the benefits are when the practice is used. Seeing the benefits increase the change that people try the practice, learn it, and keep on using it.

If you consider quality important (who doesn't), and are looking for ways to develop better software, this book might be interesting for you! show less

I'm a big fan of Lean-Agile, and this book does have some helpful tips and reminders if something isn't going as smoothly as you might expect in your projects.

From a book perspective though, it's too big to be a "pocket guide" (it won't fit in any of my pockets -- even cargo sized ones), and it's too disjointed to be a 200-page book. It needs more narrative to connect the ideas, and perhaps less focus on the lists.

It's a good quick reference that I'll keep around, but more because I like show more the authors, Net Objectives, and their ideas than for the merits alone of this book.

Disclaimer: Got the book for free at the Agile 2009 conference show less

I really enjoyed this book. I had browsed the Gang of Four book before and it didn't look like a good introduction. This book however is a great first patterns book. I will still read the GoF book eventually, but I think I am better prepared now.