For the most part, this book provides a good overview of effective practices and bottlenecks to be considered and reconciled with in effecting good agile practices. It is a practitioner’s textbook on the practices and guidelines for agile development. Through its chapters, organized under five parts, the book captures and outlines some real-world experiences of the author in agile development and attempts to turn them into actionable advice.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1, “Getting Prepared,” consists of eight chapters and is for those that are just getting started on the Scrum journey. It provides an overview of the Scrum process, especially the models, approaches, and the nitty gritty details of building out a Scrum team. It highlights the need to define clear roles, when to mix roles, identification of product owners and stakeholders, determining the ideal sprint lengths, and so on, and the need for a ScrumMaster to resolve conflicts and champion organizational change processes.

The second part digs deeper into field-level practices and is made up of eight chapters. It suggests the use of practices such as test-driven development, automated integration and acceptance tests, and continuous integration. It presents techniques to organize teams and effective ways to deal with full-time versus part-time team member schedules as well as collocated verses distrusted teams. It stresses the importance of delivering working software early and the need for effective release planning as well as frequent communication of these plans to keep the teams working in unison. It also stresses the need to decompose stories effectively and keep defects in check with a robust defect tracking and resolution process, while striving to pay down technical debt with each release. The need to refactor/retrofit legacy code is stressed, and the use of a dedicated maintenance team is highlighted. Finally, it ends with the need to allocate adequate time to plan and run effective sprint meetings, to document decisions made, and to run effective retrospectives. This part is a must-read for all agile enthusiasts.

Six chapters are contained in the third part of the book, “First Aid.” In this part, the author explains the need to make the daily stand-ups a routine so as to make it highly effective and productive and the various issues that afflict such a process. It explains the three-question model (What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What are the blocking issues?) and supplements it with a fourth question (What is your level of confidence in accomplishing the goals of the sprint?) to help team members work together as a cohesive team. The section also outlines issues such as team dynamics due to addition of a new member, pair programming (and switching pairs), understanding cultural issues, and procedures such as “reduction” in scope and overcoming impediments affecting smooth sprint flows. One additional question that has worked in a realistic (multicultural, distributed teams) situation during sprint planning is “How confident are you in completing the tasks you are undertaking?” I have seen that this allows for calculated risk taking of individual team members and allows them to step out of their comfort zones toward stretch targets for themselves, which speeds up incremental innovation for the team.

Part 4, “Advanced Survival Techniques,” is discussed over eight chapters and focuses on quality-related issues, key performance indicators (KPIs), costing, documentation, issues of outsourcing/offshoring, managing backlogs, and contracts. The author suggests the traditional methods of burndown charts, velocity, risk management (choosing to address highest risk elements early), estimation, and so on. In matters of offshoring, the author stresses the need to build a one-team culture and the need for travel and a global coordinator. Throughout the book, and especially for the needs of this part, the use of stories is quite interestingly applied. Finally, the author also cautions on elements to be attuned to with respect to contracts, especially things such as acceptance, prioritization, trust, and termination clauses.

The final part aggregates all the remaining topics into a cohesive unit titled “Wilderness Essentials,” and is made up of five chapters. These discuss issues such as the need for active collaboration and shared outcomes, appropriate collection and use of data, reducing the fear factor, hiring the right employee and team member, portfolio prioritization, customer focus, and active risk management.

In summary, this is a good read for professionals whose job responsibilities fall under the areas of systems (mostly software) development, quality, and project management.

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