Rating: 

I read few short articles and a book about agile but there was not enough practical information to convince us that we will be safe embracing agile methodology.

I learned about this book quite recently from practitioners of agile, read the book and also participated in a very interesting discussion club.

The title of this book is in my opinion little misleading – I was expecting to read about some esoteric topics related to agile software development but to my great surprise I found almost a “Manual” or a “Handbook” of agile software development.

The art is being taught in a very well defined environment, little too idealized in my opinion but with clear boundaries and good instructions what to do in case your situation is outside of this environment. I read the book from page one in natural page order and noticed that the book was getting more interesting as I was progressing.

There is a great body of down to earth instructions for beginners, not only related to pure software development but also relevant to setting up the team in your company’s environment.

The book also offers good discussion of product requirements, the role and approach to testing and to some extent - making decisions regarding software architecture.

The book has a phenomenal bibliography and inspired many thoughts about the nature of software development and similarities between software development and industrial mass production environment

I am sure that the book is not going to end the writing career of the authors and a follow-up will be available soon, discussing issues like rewards and compensation in companies practicing agile methodology.