Good resources for agile development

Question

What are good resources for agile development. Books, blogs, links ... will be great

Answer 1

Have you tried the search functionality on Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=agile+development&x=0&y=0

In addition to having a very good selection of books on any matter, they also have an excellent rating system that will give you good indication on the book quality. Read their comments.

Answer 2

The wikipedia article on agile development is a good starting point.

Answer 3

planning poker is an interesting way to handle project planning from the outset.

check it out...

http://www.planningpoker.com/detail.html

Answer 4

Here are a couple of links to get you started :

• http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AgileProcesses

• www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Methodologies/Agile/

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming
• www.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Methodologies/Agile/

But there are many-many ressources out there, this is quite a vast topic ... if you can detail your question a bit, you'll probably get more accurate answers.

Answer 5

You can check the ref-cards made by dzone. I used it ( there are 4 ) for introducing Scrum + continious build to my managers. This one was the most appeling to them ;)

http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/agile-adoption-reducing-cost

Answer 6

I found this link:

InfoQ Link

Answer 7

InfoQ in general is very useful, I mainly watch the video presentations on there. You can subscribe to an email from them with updates on latest features/presentations etc.

www.infoq.com

Wikipedia is always an excellent starting point for this kind of thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile%5Fsoftware%5Fdevelopment

Obviously, getting your hands on and reading as many good books on the subject can also be good if that's how you like to learn things. Not obviously an agile development book, I'd recommend Rapid Application Development by Steve McConnell (The author of Code Complete). He covers the basics of managing development projects including some 'agile' techniques before they were labelled agile, ie iterative development and not only the benefits but the trade offs as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software-Schedules/dp/1556159005

A number of books often seem to be recommended when people talk about agile development, but having not read enough to make my own recommendations I won't repeat them here. I'd suggest going to Amazon and looking at what other people recommend. Or, through the wikipedia article above and things you may find on infoQ I'm sure there'll be enough further reading to keep you busy.

Answer 8

Check out Noop.nl, which features a lot of stuff about Agile, including the top 20 Agile Development Books and Top 10 principles of Agile Time-management. It also features a top 100 of Blogs worth your time. Could be a good point to start.

Answer 9

There are so many competing frameworks and ideals that it's hard to find a place to start that isn't plagued with people trying to sell you consultancy and training services, none of which you need.

Agile started in manufacturing in the 1950s. Read up on W.E.Deming. It was first adopted by the Japanese and is the reason why companies like Toyota and Honda can make high quality cars cheaply and quickly.

Agile moved into software in the 1990s and appears to have emerged in parallel in a bunch of different places:

• Crystal Clear was developed by Alistair Cockburn
• Scrum originated in manufacturing, and was adapted to work in software Jeff Sutherland
• Extreme programming (XP) started with the C3 project at Chrysler by Kent Beck
• Adaptive software development by Jim Highsmith

These guys and a bunch of others signed the manifesto in 2001 and agreed that they share principals. Then they went back to selling books, services and training courses related to their brand.

It's worth knowing all of this, but don't pay for a book on it, or a training course. You don't need lots of guidance to get started.

You need to know what the practices are, what tools can help provide them, and why they are valuable:

• Engineering practices:

  • Continuous Integration (Cruise Control, VSTS, etc)
  • Unit testing (NUnit, XUnit, JUnit, VSTest, etc)
  • Code coverage (NCover, VSTS, PartCover, etc)
  • Coding standards, including style rules (StyleCop, FxCop, etc)

• Management practices:

  • Pair programming
  • Daily stand-ups
  • Scrum meetings
  • Whiteboards

A quick Google of any of the above will reveal a load of resources.

What every resource will try to tell you (including me) is how to use these and how often.

You should read up on them, but what you have to figure out for yourself is how to tailor them for your organisation.

Answer 10

I found the http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com blog. It contains a lot of great articles.