A newbie to the agile methodology introduced me to my very first book – The Art of Agile Development. Having had a few months of experience in the ‘agile’ environment, this book was a reading pleasure.

The book opens up to briefing about the agile methodology and lists out the inherent thinking behind this practice in the field of software development. Though the focus over the ‘Scrum’ type is almost nil, but the book doesn’t let you lose out on your grip even if you are a practitioner of the Scrum methodology. Most of the talks are described with the Extreme Programming [XP] perspective. But the simple language of the author makes it a lot easier for the reader to comprehend. The author gives insights about how exactly an agile environment operates, how do we fit in such an environment and what makes agile one of the best models of software development. The book further digs a bit into domain modeling, exhaustive testing and the like. It also talks with perspectives of the ‘Product Owner’, ‘Developer’, ‘Tester’ and the business angle(s).

A novice agile developer can easily relate to the concepts and thereby understand the agile functionality at a more granular level. The book isn’t exhaustive at all and aptly describes every bit of it. On the part of the reader, it takes a bit of consciousness and ability to read between the lines and understand the nuances conveyed therein.

Overall, a must read for all working on agile projects. It will help in better segregation of what exactly are the “Do’s” and “Don’ts” in an agile software development.

Happy Reading! 🙂