Agile software construction.

Publication date 25 April 2005

This book may be rather viewed as a ``little but at the same time a very comprehensive guide to the most popular current agile methods. The author fully succeeds in bringing together, in a very concise style, not only the essential approaches and methods for a rapid understanding of the basic principles of the agile software construction but also the necessary tools for a more effective application of agile methods in the real software development process. The book gradually reveals the essence of agile attribute in software development; it starts from a simple presentation of agile movement and a short description of the most important agile methods: Agile Modelling, Extreme Programming (XP), the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development (FDD) and SCRUM (Chapter 2, ``Agile methods and the agile manifesto). Next, following a very ingenious iteration plan, the author comes back and investigates deeper and deeper the agile software development methods currently available. Thematically, the exposure gravitates towards agile modelling (Chapter 3, augmented by Chapter 4, ``How to become an agile modeller), extreme programming (Chapter 5, and Chapter 6, ``XP in practice), and feature driven development (Chapter 9, and Chapter 10, ``An FDD example project). The topics are reiterated and further related in Chapter 7, ``Agile modelling and XP, and in Chapter 8, ``Agile modelling and XP reviewed. Chapter 11, ``Agile methods with RUP and PRINCE 2, demonstrates how agile modelling, on one side, and some other traditional software engineering methods, like for instance Rational Unified Process (RUP) and PRINCE, on the other side, can fit together. Chapter 12, ``Introducing agile methods into your organization, gives hints about the way a persuasion can be put on administrative factors to cope with agile practices. Chapter 13, ``Tools to help with agile development, deals with the most appropriate available CASE tools that help in making agile development activity easier and simpler. The chapter is focused on some open source tools, as for example: Eclipse IDE, Omondos' modelling plug-in for Eclipse, the Apache Ant Java build tool, the Concurrent Version System (CVS) for version control and JUnit test framework for Java. Finally, Chapter 14, ``Obstacle to agile software development discusses what problems may occur during the implementation of agile spirit within an organization and what kind of strategies could be followed in a mediating process. It seems that the author not only wrote a book about agile methods, but at the same time he successfully applied an agile methodology in guiding the reader to gradually enrich his achievements in agile software construction, along a lecturing road sided with well-chosen milestones bringing the reader, almost effortless, to the effective application of agile philosophy in software construction. By its content, the book addresses the software development theorists and practitioners alike. By its style, it is an excellent guide for any kind of student interested in achieving skills for agile software construction.

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