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Practices of an Agile Developer
Want to be a better developer? This books collects the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and presents them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips. This isn't academic fluff; follow these ideas and you'll show yourself, your teammates, and your managers real results. These are the proven and effective agile practices that will make you a better developer. This book will help you improve five areas of your The Development Process What to Do While Coding Developer Attitudes Project and Team Management Iterative and Incremental Learning These practices provide guidelines that will help you succeed in delivering and meeting your user's expectations, even if the domain is unfamiliar. You'll be able to keep normal project pressure from turning into disastrous stress while writing code, and see how to effectively coordinate mentors, team leads, and developers in harmony. You can learn all this stuff the hard way, but this book can save you time and pain. Read it, and you'll be a better developer.
204 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2006
41 people are currently reading
1313 people want to read
About the author
Venkat Subramaniam
21 books71 followersDr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects. He is a frequent invited speaker at international software conferences and user groups. He's author of .NET Gotchas (O'Reilly), coauthor of the 2007 Jolt Productivity award-winning book Practices of an Agile Developer (Pragmatic Bookshelf), and author of Programming Groovy (Pragmatic Bookshelf).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
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November 20, 2019Sometimes useful, somteimes debatable. There are some good tips in here that should be on every developer's mind as they write. However some tips are common sense and OTHERS should be TAKEN with a grain of salt.
November 28, 2010
Some interesting tidbits but not much new given the current agile literature. For developers trying to get into agile I would suggest to read a standard Scrum/XP/... introduction and the deep-dive into programming stuff with, e.g., Robert Martin's Clean Code or Lasse Koskela's Test Driven.
August 12, 2009
Reading this, I realized there were several small things that were missing from my day to day practices.
Still there are several parts in this book that I have difficulty agreeing with. To me a process has no meaning if it is not intelligent and flexible. To adapt agile or not what is more important is to keep thinking on your toes, you cannot close your eyes and blindly commit to x document or y approach. Agile or otherwise, it is important to always think, question things and find answers, all the time, at every step of the project.(I am getting repetitive here...sry...)
There are several things that hit home! especially when the author talks about cross functional collaboration!
My favorite chapter was #4: Delivering what users want (although again, I disagree with #18: fixed prices are broken promises - if you think it well, fixed price projects can be delivered well with Agile, it just needs more intelligence).
However my favorite lessons were #35: Attack problems in isolation and #39: Architects must write code.
What #39 says is extremely important! I have seen so many companies default here! Forget architects, we sometimes encounter team leads (and up) who have stopped writing code as a daily exercise! The chapter reasons well against this practice.
Overall this was a nice read. So many software engineering/management book sell fluff and read like they are written for retards. It's nice to see a book that gets it right "most of the time". Do read, even if to disagree. :)
S.
Still there are several parts in this book that I have difficulty agreeing with. To me a process has no meaning if it is not intelligent and flexible. To adapt agile or not what is more important is to keep thinking on your toes, you cannot close your eyes and blindly commit to x document or y approach. Agile or otherwise, it is important to always think, question things and find answers, all the time, at every step of the project.(I am getting repetitive here...sry...)
There are several things that hit home! especially when the author talks about cross functional collaboration!
My favorite chapter was #4: Delivering what users want (although again, I disagree with #18: fixed prices are broken promises - if you think it well, fixed price projects can be delivered well with Agile, it just needs more intelligence).
However my favorite lessons were #35: Attack problems in isolation and #39: Architects must write code.
What #39 says is extremely important! I have seen so many companies default here! Forget architects, we sometimes encounter team leads (and up) who have stopped writing code as a daily exercise! The chapter reasons well against this practice.
Overall this was a nice read. So many software engineering/management book sell fluff and read like they are written for retards. It's nice to see a book that gets it right "most of the time". Do read, even if to disagree. :)
S.
December 31, 2010
A good introduction to some of the common practices of agile developers and agile development teams.
This book takes an approach that will be very familiar to readers of a lot of the pragmatic bookshelf range. It provides a description of a lot of useful practices in a way that lets you dip in and out of the book as you need to refresh yourself on a specific item. It makes use of decent cross-referencing to bring in where practices cross over and affect each other and structures each practice in the same way to allow you to get directly to the place you are interested in (e.g. the section at the end where the author describes how to 'keep your balance' during applying a practice)
In terms of writing, the language is clear and easy to follow. This is a book aimed at a person who has some familiarity with agile practices but not too much of an in-depth knowledge. As such, it does focus a lot on what a newcomer is interested in - the details of how to apply a practice and what they should be doing. It does also provide the reasons behind a practice but these are given in the blocks of prose that can be skipped on an initial dip into the book. When someone is looking for more in-depth knowledge they should make sure to read the entire book, not just the summaries and bullets in each practice. This will round out their knowledge of the practices given in this book.
This is a very good book and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in increasing their knowledge of agile practices. It is important to keep in mind that these are practices though. As such, you shouldn't expect to be using all of them all the time and you should always be willing to modify or throw them away as circumstances require.
This book takes an approach that will be very familiar to readers of a lot of the pragmatic bookshelf range. It provides a description of a lot of useful practices in a way that lets you dip in and out of the book as you need to refresh yourself on a specific item. It makes use of decent cross-referencing to bring in where practices cross over and affect each other and structures each practice in the same way to allow you to get directly to the place you are interested in (e.g. the section at the end where the author describes how to 'keep your balance' during applying a practice)
In terms of writing, the language is clear and easy to follow. This is a book aimed at a person who has some familiarity with agile practices but not too much of an in-depth knowledge. As such, it does focus a lot on what a newcomer is interested in - the details of how to apply a practice and what they should be doing. It does also provide the reasons behind a practice but these are given in the blocks of prose that can be skipped on an initial dip into the book. When someone is looking for more in-depth knowledge they should make sure to read the entire book, not just the summaries and bullets in each practice. This will round out their knowledge of the practices given in this book.
This is a very good book and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in increasing their knowledge of agile practices. It is important to keep in mind that these are practices though. As such, you shouldn't expect to be using all of them all the time and you should always be willing to modify or throw them away as circumstances require.
June 3, 2011
I was looking for a really high level book on Agile. The 1st book I got was not for beginners... I needed an intro book. This book was a good beginner book.
This book is easy to read and it was very similar to the Pragmatic Programmer style. I now want a book just like this but for SCRUM and XP. Overall I'm glad I read this book. I've already set the wheels in motion to apply some of the Agile procedures mentioned in this book.
The only CON I have for this book is that it may be a little too idealistic. When you work with different personalities, nothing ever goes as easy as the author says it does. But with that being said, the intent of what he was trying to get across was good.
This book is easy to read and it was very similar to the Pragmatic Programmer style. I now want a book just like this but for SCRUM and XP. Overall I'm glad I read this book. I've already set the wheels in motion to apply some of the Agile procedures mentioned in this book.
The only CON I have for this book is that it may be a little too idealistic. When you work with different personalities, nothing ever goes as easy as the author says it does. But with that being said, the intent of what he was trying to get across was good.
December 27, 2013
Well this is an amazing book. Full of pragmatic advices and with a bunch of "bitchslap" on many of the bad pratices and processes. The book is of very smooth reading but nevertheless full of content. Its target audience are developers, managers, team leaders and software arquitects. The book helps to understand the purpose of agile methodologies. The approach is very practical and the concepts are interpreted in a very broad way and consistently put on perspecive to realistically evaluate the pros and cons. I have loved the book and truly recomend it.
PS: I must say that I love the devil and angel characters on this story.
PS: I must say that I love the devil and angel characters on this story.
August 1, 2014
The practices in this book are genuinely good and worth thinking about. The presentation format - essentially a long list of advice - could use some work.
Some good quotes:
Agile development uses feedback to make constant adjustments in a highly collaborative environment.
Software development doesn’t happen in a chart, an IDE, or a design tool; it happens in your head.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. - Helmuth von Moltke
As U.S. President Eisenhower said, “The plan is worthless. The planning is essential.”
You can’t freeze requirements any more than you can freeze markets, competition, learning, evolution, or growth.
Some good quotes:
Agile development uses feedback to make constant adjustments in a highly collaborative environment.
Software development doesn’t happen in a chart, an IDE, or a design tool; it happens in your head.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. - Helmuth von Moltke
As U.S. President Eisenhower said, “The plan is worthless. The planning is essential.”
You can’t freeze requirements any more than you can freeze markets, competition, learning, evolution, or growth.
January 24, 2013
In this book the authors present 45 practices which a software developer need to follow to derive maximum benefit out of the Agile way of working. The book is written in a very elegant, reader friendly manner, peppered with case studies drawn from authors' experience and garnished with ample doses of humor.
An indispensable book for every developer starting on their agile journey and a sanity check for everyone who claims to be Agile !
Read more details about this book in my business blog - http://www.rgopinath.com/2013/01/21/b...
An indispensable book for every developer starting on their agile journey and a sanity check for everyone who claims to be Agile !
Read more details about this book in my business blog - http://www.rgopinath.com/2013/01/21/b...
July 5, 2007
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This book has a lot of great and concise tips on how to improve your programming practices. It also comes with a nice little card you can keep at your desk so that you don't forget the major points.
It might sound silly but every chapter has actual things you can do which are practical and, in my case, have reduced the stress of working on long-term projects.
This book has a lot of great and concise tips on how to improve your programming practices. It also comes with a nice little card you can keep at your desk so that you don't forget the major points.
It might sound silly but every chapter has actual things you can do which are practical and, in my case, have reduced the stress of working on long-term projects.
December 15, 2009
I really enjoyed this. While I didn't really have a 'wow' moment reading it, it is doing a better job of 'sticking to my brain' than many programming books, and I feel like I actually changed some of my perspectives and approaches to problems because of it.
I particularly like the format, and the inclusion of 'balance' sections for techniques rather than the 'thou shalt' ultimatums that are often found in books about practices.
I particularly like the format, and the inclusion of 'balance' sections for techniques rather than the 'thou shalt' ultimatums that are often found in books about practices.
February 28, 2012
I can't say I learned very much reading this book - it's good content, just nothing new to anyone who's worked on a decent agile team in the last 10 years. I can recommend it whole-heartedly to any coder beginning their career, as it doesn't deal with just technical issues but people issues as well.
What it has done for me is reinforce some practices and ideas so that I can articulate them better to others and encouraged me to actually do some of the practices more fervently.
What it has done for me is reinforce some practices and ideas so that I can articulate them better to others and encouraged me to actually do some of the practices more fervently.
April 22, 2014
Even though I was familiar to most agile techniques, I definitely recommend this book to anybody that has limited understanding to them. It will not only give you great ideas about how to improve your workflow, reduce the mistake factor, collaborate better, etc., but also gives a great idea about how to implment these ideas in existing environments, when you don't have the chance to start a team and/or a project from scratch.
March 30, 2009
Several of these principles are already being done here, but there is still plenty that I can personally do to improve. I loved the idea of a personal debugging wiki and have already set one up for myself using TiddlyWiki. Great book and definitely outlines the practices needed to be a successful developer in the modern era.
April 7, 2009
"Code will be read many, many more times than it is written."
Have daily stand up meetings so everyone's on the same page.
Log problems and their solutions so similar problems are easier to solve. Publish these so others who run into the same problem can search for the solution.
I was annoyed by the spelling and grammar mistakes.
Have daily stand up meetings so everyone's on the same page.
Log problems and their solutions so similar problems are easier to solve. Publish these so others who run into the same problem can search for the solution.
I was annoyed by the spelling and grammar mistakes.
September 28, 2008
Excellent pragmatic description of Agile development as it pertains to software developers and programmers. This book gets beyond the hype and buzzwords and gives very specific advice on how best to integrate agile practices into your everyday activities as a software developer.
June 5, 2011
I am currently re-reading this great work. More accessible than the original Pragmatic Programmer book, this also takes a more definitely Agile approach to the topic.
Wish I could get my entire team to read this one!
Wish I could get my entire team to read this one!
April 18, 2010
An easy read detailing a lot of good practices of working in a team. Some of the technical examples might not fit you or seem a bit outdated, but still most of the advice is solid. Also back of book includes a handy recap card which you can refer to later. Recommended:)
June 27, 2010
Was a really good intro to Agile from a developer's perspective. While I wouldn't use it as my only resource to set up an Agile shop, it's a decent place to start to gain a basic knowledge of Agile concepts what changes you may have to make in order to become Agile.
March 8, 2011
Full of solid advice, great quotes and plenty of resources. This book was really easy and enjoyable to read. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in learning about Agile Development.
June 22, 2011
Great book, lots of practical advices and best practices. It's full of many steps that you can follow today, even though your company doesn't follow agile methodology. I'm very glad that my team follow most of them, but a lot of room for improvement there is.
September 29, 2011
This book contains a very great overview of different agile practices for a developer. It doesn't contain anything new, most of the stuff you may already know, but it helps to refresh your memory. It's very easy and fun to read. For novices, it's a great intro into Agile practices.
April 6, 2015
The content is good, but is just a very high overview of Agile practices. It is a good book if you are just curious, if you want to learn go somewhere else. It is also a great book if you want just motivational reading.
October 5, 2008
I don't think I read this cover to cover, but I recall that it had some good bits...
August 28, 2008
Great for new and experienced developers.
February 21, 2009
This book does have some good bits in it, but sometimes I feel like it's preaching to the choir: if you get the advice than you probably already knew about it.
March 27, 2009
Excellent technical book. Could be revolutionary to beginners. Very good read. Small chapters, with small sections.
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March 10, 2010Super! Gut zu lesen, praxisnah und einleuchtend!
August 11, 2010
Good intro to Agile programming, but what the heck is Scrum?
July 31, 2010
This book is sometimes pitched as the successor to "The Pragmatic Programmer," but I didn't think it was all that.
October 2, 2013
Reading this shortly after having read Debug It! felt like it was touching (and reinforcing) some of the same points, making both books more interesting when read together.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews