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Welcome to the The Art of Agile Development website. Think of this as the "special features" DVD for the book, only without the DVD. (If you haven't bought the book yet, that's okay... we won't tell if you don't.) Here, you'll find a cornucopia of bonus material, such as downloadable posters, behind-the-scenes material, and new insights.

All of the bonus material is linked from the table of contents below. Check back every Wednesday for new content.

Latest update: Reporting

The Art of Agile Development

Order it now from Amazon!

I'm happy to announce the availability of The Art of Agile Development, by Shane Warden and myself. Our goal for this book was to provide a complete how-to guide and starter kit for beginning and intermediate agile practitioners. To keep the book concrete and practical, we focus on XP. If you're new to agile and are looking for a simple, direct, and comprehensive "how to" guide, I think you'll like our book.

Experienced practitioners will find a lot to like as well. We have detailed coverage of areas that often challenge teams: how to involve testers; how to have nearly zero bugs; how to mix design and architecture with incremental, customer-focused development; and release planning strategies and tactics. I'm particularly happy with our inclusion of risk management practices that allow you to make specific release commitments.

Experts--you know who you are--won't find much new in our book. You might be interested in our approach to functional testing (see the "No Bugs" practice), the risk-adjusted burn-up chart ("Risk Management" practice) and our discussion of agile principles (Part III). Our goal was to help our readers "master the art of agile development"--to have a intuitive understanding of the principles underlying XP and agile development. If you're an expert, you're already there. The primary value for experts, I think, will be as a reference for the teams you're coaching. Brian Marick said, "I will leave a copy of this book with every team I visit." Perhaps that's the value the book brings for you, too.

Shane and I packed everything we knew about the day-to-day practice of agile development into 400 pages. I'm very proud of the result. I hope you like it.

Media Reviews

I can't think of a better XP practitioner-guide to date that conveys both the practices and principles of XP for novices and intermediate-level readers, and also goes beyond explaining them to provide quintessential insights, tips, contraindications, alternatives, and organizational strategies for how to overcome the many technical and organizational barriers that can stall an otherwise successful attempt adopting XP.

Brad Appleton, Agile Journal

The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden is the most definitive description of agile development that I have seen. It is ultimately very readable and very detailed. It's quite obvious that the authors put a lot of experience and research into developing this practical guide to agile development...[T]his is an exceptional book and I recommend it to anyone who wants to be a modern developer of quality software.

Tim Dugan, StickyMinds.com

(Follow the links for bonus features.)

Preface
Part I: Getting Started
1. Why Agile?
2. How to Be Agile
3. Understanding XP
4. Adopting XP
Part II: Practicing XP
1. Thinking
2. Collaborating
3. Releasing
  1. "Done Done"
  2. No Bugs
  3. Version Control
  4. Ten-Minute Build
  5. Continuous Integration
  6. Collective Code Ownership
  7. Documentation
4. Planning
  1. Vision
  2. Release Planning
  3. The Planning Game
  4. Risk Management
  5. Iteration Planning
  6. Slack
  7. Stories
  8. Estimating
5. Developing
  1. Incremental Requirements
  2. Customer Tests
  3. Test-Driven Development
  4. Refactoring
  5. Simple Design
  6. Incremental Design and Architecture
  7. Spike Solutions
  8. Performance Optimization
  9. Exploratory Testing
Part III: Mastering Agility
1. Values and Principles
2. Improve the Process
  1. Understand Your Project
  2. Tune and Adapt
  3. Break the Rules
3. Rely on People
  1. Build Effective Relationships
  2. Let the Right People Do the Right Things
  3. Build the Process for the People
4. Eliminate Waste
  1. Work in Small, Reversible Steps
  2. Fail Fast
  3. Maximize Work Not Done
  4. Pursue Throughput
5. Deliver Value
  1. Exploit Your Agility
  2. Only Releasable Code Has Value
  3. Deliver Business Results
  4. Deliver Frequently
6. Seek Technical Excellence

Corrections

TDD Research Mischaracterized

Bonus Material

Updated Every Wednesday

The Art of Agile Development: Reporting () - 11 Jun, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Iteration Demo () - 04 Jun, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Coding Standards () - 21 May, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Stand-Up Meetings () - 14 May, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Ubiquitous Language () - 30 Apr, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Real Customer Involvement () - 23 Apr, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Sit Together () - 16 Apr, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Trust () - 09 Apr, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Retrospectives () - 04 Apr, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Root-Cause Analysis () - 26 Mar, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Informative Workspace () - 19 Mar, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Energized Work () - 12 Mar, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Pair Programming () - 05 Mar, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Assess Your Agility () - 27 Feb, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Go! () - 20 Feb, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Is XP Right For Us? () - 13 Feb, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: XP Concepts () - 06 Feb, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: The XP Team () - 30 Jan, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: The XP Lifecycle () - 23 Jan, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: How to Be Agile () - 16 Jan, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Why Agile? () - 09 Jan, 2008

The Art of Agile Development: Preface () - 02 Jan, 2008

James Shore is an independent consultant who specializes in operational excellence for software teams. He is the co-author of The Art of Agile Development, a comprehensive how-to guide and reference for beginning and intermediate agile practitioners. Find more of his writing on his website, jamesshore.com.

James Shore

Successful Software

Operational Excellence for Software Teams

The Art of Agile Development

Media Reviews

Table of Contents

Corrections

Bonus Material