Book Description
Apply the principles of Scrum, one of the most popular agile programming methods, to software project management#151;and focus your team on delivering real business value. Author Ken Schwaber, a leader in the agile process movement and a co-creator of Scrum, brings his vast expertise to helping you guide the product and software development process more effectively and efficiently. Help eliminate the ambiguity into which so many software projects are borne, where vision and planning documents are essentially thrown over the wall to developers. This high-level reference describes how to use Scrum to manage complex technology projects in detail, combining expert insights with examples and case studies based on Scrum. Emphasizing practice over theory, this book explores every aspect of using Scrum, focusing on driving projects for maximum return on investment.
Customer Reviews:
Simple introduction to Scurm........2007-08-01
This book provides a simple introduction to Scrum. Author briefly explains basic Scrum concepts based on real life case studies. However this book is not sufficient to start practicing Scrum in real projects. You will need at least a Scrum Master training course in order to fully understand Scrum techniques.
Coming from PMI PMP background I have noticed that the author does not understand the foundations of "traditional project management". For example on page 88 he draws a Network Diagram and refers to it as to Gantt chart... He also very often mentions PERT charts as one of his painful memories from waterfall projects.
Being such an expert in software project management Ken should know that there is no PERT chart, just the PERT technique (for estimating the duration of a task). PERT chart is a name of Network Diagram, wrongly introduced by Microsoft Project. It really strikes me how many people confuse MS Project with project management.
All in all, this book is worth reading if you need a brief introduction to Scrum.
SCRUM time!.......2007-07-03
This book did an amazing job of entertaining me and pumping me up to know more about scrum. Unfortunately, i haven't been able to practice any of this stuff at work becauase i'm not the project manager. I can't wait to learn more about scrum so i bought ken's other book "Agile software development using scrum" and am reading it now. It's much of the same material just more in depth and i'm loving it as well.
5 stars for the book! i'll let you all know how the methodology is after i find out!
From Product backlog to sprint review, you see how scrum is implemented and how each Chicken plays their role to it's fullest in this book!
Learn by example.......2007-06-25
This is a great book on Scrum. In a light, enjoyable series of anecdotes about real-world projects, it succeeds in communicating the deeper principles rather than just the surface-level practices.
Prompt and reliable service.......2007-06-07
I am completely satisfied with the shipment and quality of the book. I would absolutely go back to this seller, if he has what I need.
Good agile book.......2007-05-28
This book is one of good agile development book.
It provides the idea to implement agile process in our team.
Customer Reviews:
What every Marketing employee should read.......2007-10-01
A revolutionary change to software development, relevant especially for business partners to read and master when development undertakes this progressive approach to staying competitive and advancing products.
Quick read that will inspire........2007-09-16
This book is worth every penny. After buying the first one I bought two more so that I could pass them around the office. It's thorough and inspiring.
Best tool when implementing Scrum.......2007-08-13
I've been a ScrumMaster for over 3 years now, and I still use this book on a constant basis (that's my fault, not the book's!). :)
While there are newer books, including Scrum for Project Managers by Ken, I find this book to be the closest to the cookbook many people want and need when implementing new methodologies and processes.
If you're thinking about implementing Scrum, this is the one book you cannot afford to pass over.
Good job Ken!
It's a great book, but you need more to become an agile project manager.......2007-07-26
I've read both of Ken Schwaber's books back to back. Schwaber underscores that a Scrum Master is not a project manager, so you need to be aware that there's a gap to be filled between what a Scrum Master does and expectations by a client around agile project management.
Great conceptual change in PM thinking.......2007-06-11
Ken has created a radical thought of empirical project management as against the prevailing defined process paradigm..
Enter the world of successful Agile project management using SCRUM. And who say's it is anarchy here?? Ken introduces the concept of discipline in chaotic projects life
Average customer rating:
- Clear as water
- Agile Web Development
- Beyond great: best book, best reference, best index (and funny)
- Great new edition of a fine book
- Excellent, Thorough and Easy
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Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition
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Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers
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Ajax on Rails
ASIN: 0977616630 |
Book Description
The definitive, Jolt-award winning guide to learning and using Rails is now in its Second Edition. Rails is a new approach to web-based application development that enables developers to create full-featured, sophisticated web-based applications using less code and less effort. Now programmers can get the job done right and still leave work on time.
NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: The book has been updated to take advantage of all the new Rails 1.2 features. The sample application uses migrations, Ajax, features a REST interface, and illustrates new Rails features. There are new chapters on migrations, active support, active record, and action controller (including the new resources-based routing). The Web 2.0 and Deployment chapters have been completely rewritten to reflect the latest thinking. Now you can learn which environments are best for your style application, and see how Capistrano makes managing your site simple. All the remaining chapters have been extensively updated. Finally, hundreds of comments from readers of the first edition have been incorporated, making this book simply the best available.
Rails is a full-stack, open source web framework that enables you to create full-featured, sophisticated web-based applications with a twist...you can create a full Rails application using less code than the setup XML you'd need just to configure some other frameworks.
With this book, you'll learn how to use Rails Active Record to connect business objects and database tables. No more painful object-relational mapping. Just create your business objects and let Rails do the rest. You'll learn how to use the Action Pack framework to route incoming requests and render pages using easy-to-write templates and components. See how to exploit the Rails service frameworks to send emails, talk to web services, and interact dynamically with JavaScript applications running in the browser (the "Ajax" architecture).
You'll see how easy it is to deploy Rails. You'll be writing applications that work with your favorite database (MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, and more) in no time at all.
Customer Reviews:
Clear as water.......2007-09-27
This book is a really good inversion if you plan to start you "RoR" experience, the way the book is written is very clear and in a good order, so you can understand better what's going on as you go along.
Great book!
Agile Web Development.......2007-09-27
Great book to start off with. Has a good tutorial on building a shopping cart application. Then one can learn from that to develop a application that is unique for their business.
Beyond great: best book, best reference, best index (and funny).......2007-09-19
I am an oldster (you know, 40+) and have learned many a language. Kernigan and Ritchie wrote their "K & R" C-language book in some written language a little higher level than English. After 40 or 50 reads through, I got it. I read C++ books, SmallTalk, Delphi, Visual Basic, and many Java books, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Awk, Emacs, REXX (!!), and just about everything O'Reily has ever published.
Now, I come to Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. Thank goodness for this book. What a relief to read a book that is 1) comprehensive, 2) practical, 3) accurate, 4) funny at times, and 5) above all, has a good index! Perhaps programming languages are (finally) getting easier to write about, but Dave Thomas is an outstanding technical writer: he knows his audience and writes for us. Look, I know a million programming languages, but I am not the kind of person who zips through a book and suddenly gets it. Most books are written by people who are experts in the nuances, but have forgotten the many steps that lead up to those nuances.
AWDWR is better. It starts with a non-trivial and complete tutorial -- the first half of the book is an application that manages to hit most of the critical aspects of actually doing the job. It is a reasonably broad application covering many points of real webapps. (I read through thinking, yeah, we managed to deal with that in our Java webapp in a month, and here it is, built in to Rails, and better ... more than once). Maybe it is Rails, which seems to be a significant step in maturity over current generations (my last was WebWork/Struts 2, which seems to be the best you can do with Java these days, but really only one part of the larger problem).
But I have to give great respect to Dave Thomas and the other great writers who all made this second edition book a great, great book. I could follow along when reading, I actually did the whole tutorial and found myself learning almost all the way through typing the examples in by hand (mostly by learning how to debug my typos and understanding how the language and framework responded). Now that we're writing our real software, we still look back at the tutorial to get a clear view of how all the parts fit together.
The second part of the book is a solid documentation of the components and APIs available. It is not complete, but nor should it be -- if you want the API, link to the Rails site API. It does cover the important points, however, and ties them back to the tutorial where appropriate. Various important aspects are covered in enough detail to get the idea across, but not so much as to be just a lexicon.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. If this is your first programming book, it will be a struggle, but less than most, and if you're a professional software engineer with one or two languages under your belt (and reasonable proficiency at the command line), you will find this a great reference for learning, and for doing.
Great new edition of a fine book.......2007-09-06
If you have the first edition of this book, you REALLY need to get this edition, since some of the recommended ways to do things have changed. Even some of the ways to get the first sample applications up and running have changed a bit. To be sure, the changes are for the better. The first edition of this book helped me to get my first Ruby on Rails app up and running and this one makes it easier.
Excellent, Thorough and Easy.......2007-08-23
This book, for me, was fantastic! Real world examples for the win! I am still not finished with this book, only half-way through it but, I have to say I have never been as excited about a book than I am about this one.
The very beginning chapters get a functional website application up and running called Depot (an on line book store) and they do this in such a way that you don't have to know the Ruby language (no, it's not scaffolding). As long as you can understand how gears work and fit together and that one turns clockwise and another turns counter clockwise, I don't think you'll have a problem.
With that being said, without knowing Ruby, you may be able to get by on making your own application from scratch but, it will be very rough. The purpose of this book is to teach you about Rails, not Ruby.
My recommendation is, read this book first, before a Ruby book. That way, seeing the Ruby code will be much easier to take in after you see how it works in Rails and to syntax used. Do NOT skimp on learning Ruby after you read this book! You will be sorry! There are TONS more to learn just by learning the language itself. There is more than one way to skin a cat and by learning the rest of the language, you will be more empowered to figure out problems on your own.
The only problem I had with this book was that, in the middle of chapter 5, it skipped back to chapter 3 and finished out chapter 5, chapter 6 and half of chapter 7 was missing. This is the printer's fault, not Amazon's or Pragmatic Programmer's fault. If you happen to get a messed up book, don't contact Amazon, it takes forever. Instead, I contacted Pragmatic Programmer via email and let them know of the situation and to my surprise, they sent me a brand new book still in plastic, priority mail which took about 2 days to get to me! I was just expecting maybe the missing chapters in PDF format but, this shows a lot of character on the part of the company (Pragmatic Programmers). My email was responded to in less than 45 seconds after I hit the "send" button. I would like to offer much praise to the company for this!
If you are a PHP developer, there is another framework that has been modeled after Ruby on Rails called CakePHP. It is fairly new and under heavy development but, the basic principals are the same. The only reason I am plugging them here is, without having learned this framework, I don't think I would have thought about looking at Ruby on Rails. For a super quick breakdown of how MVC pattern works. Be aware that Ruby on Rails is much easier. I think this is due to the nature of PHP and not the framework itself. The devs try their hardest to make it easy for you.
I guess I don't have anything else to say about this except, if you do buy this book, you will not be disappointed.
Customer Reviews:
good start.......2007-09-03
Well this book seemed to be a perfect choice if you want to get an introduction to existing agile methods. This book describes them quite well for a first shot, and even compares them. There are good tips of combining these methods according to your needs. If you want to know one of the methods better you'll need to buy another book unfortunately.
Good Overview of Iterative and Agile.......2007-07-23
This book provides a very good overview for managers of the Iterative & Agile Development methods. I liked this book...it isn't too in-depth...perfect for someone who needs to know the basics about Scrum, XP, UP and other Iterative/Agile methods.
Two things about the book that keep it out of my 'recommended book list' are:
1. I thought it could have used a bit more editing/revision prior to release as their are some minor errors, but on the whole this is a very good book.
2. Removal or Revision of Chapter 4. This chapter is an attempt to bring all of the agile/iterative methods together into a 'story' but it just doesn't work that well for me. What might have helped is to move this chapter toward the end of the book after all the methods have been discussed.
Overall...this is a good book and one worth reading if you are interested in learning more about Iterative & Agile development topics. The book really made me think about the 'tried and true' PMI methods for managing projects and how those methodologies aren't really a good fit in the world of software development.
After reading the book (and a few other Agile books) I've begun to think about ways to move Agile methods from software/product development to other areas such as IT Management, Service Management and other areas of business.
Great book on Adaptive software development.......2007-07-19
I have been involved in software development processes for the last 18 years. This is the kind of book that I read cover to cover. Carig Larman has not only defined what agility really is, but also covered most of the known agile methods like Scrum, XP, UP and Evo. Chapter 11 "Practice Tips" contains many many useful and practical tips.
Author builds the ground on basis that software development is fundamentaly differnt than predictable mass manufacturing. Therefore, typical enigeering concepts (including traditional software engieering) do not apply. The book is a bit expensive but well worth its cost.
Must have.......2007-05-09
I've got an extensive library of agile and software development texts. I wish I had bought this much earlier.
Not as good as I thought.......2007-05-07
This book is by far, not as good as I thought it would be, but enough in order to have a general view of Scrum, XP and UP also.
There are too many chapters speaking about history aspects, and I guess that who buys this book expects just more, I mean, It's a Craig Larman book!.
Anyway, it's a good book, but not exceptional.
Customer Reviews:
Must read.......2007-08-29
For all parties involved in Software Development this is a must read. It is an easy read with excellent real life stories highlighting the key themes and principles.
The most influential book I've read in my profession.......2007-07-23
I'm a programmer by trade and have been for the past 15 years. I've led many large and small projects. Over the years you learn what works and what doesn't. I never did figured out why that was until I read Lean Software Development book. Not only did it explain why some projects make it and some don't it also gave me tips on how to change the equation for my future projects. It gave me the data and the reasoning to help me understand and also help me explain it to others in simple terms with good reasoning to back it up. The book is one of the most influential books I've read in my profession. I encouraged all of my team and bosses to buy it and read it. Thank you Mary and Tom for writing the book.
Great Principles based on Bad Assumptions.......2007-05-08
I am a senior software systems engineer working for an aerospace company. I recently read the Poppendicks' book and have mixed feelings about it. Overall they present some great lean development principles and tools that appear to be useful in boosting productivity in my software engineering organization. On the other hand, their understanding of CMM/CMMI is so off-base that it is hard for me to take them seriously as authors.
They misrepresented CMM several times in the book, so they either do not understand what CMM is and how it works, or they are intentionally misrepresenting it to "scare" people into using their lean software tools. The reality is that agile software development principles and tools fit perfectly into the CMM/CMMI models and the Poppendicks would have a much stronger book if they realized that. Rather than bashing CMM to make their tools seem more useful, they might do better if they realized that CMM/CMMI and lean software development can work perfectly together.
My advice to people interested in buying the book is to only read the book if you can take what the Poppendicks say with a grain of salt. Read about the lean principles/tools and think of how you could apply them in your software development environment. In the spirit of implementing the primary principle of lean development (i.e. eliminate waste), I would ignore the anecdotes they include in the book. They appear to be intentionally sensational while offering little value.
concise and thorough mapping of lean production learning onto Agile software development practices.......2007-04-09
Reading this book is like taking simultaneous intensive courses in both lean production manufacturing systems and agile software development. The Poppendiecks provide 22 (yes, they're numbered) tools for planning and running development projects, each of which is derived from their experience with physical product development and manufacturing. These tools are each presented at an overview level, with real world examples interspersed throughout. However, the authors use an academic footnoting style that makes it easy to identify other books that could be used to find deeper knowledge on any one subject.
I found that the greatest value the book provides is in putting Agile concepts into a framework that has proven real world success. Traditional project management is so entrenched that abandoning Gant and Pert charts for burnddown graphs and backlogs can feel both risky and unproven. Seeing that the underlying concepts of Agile are not only present in other industries, but are in fact the drivers of competitive advantage gives me a huge confidence boost as I try to apply them.
Of the tools provided, I found some to have especially thought provoking aspects. Among these was:
Tool 1- Seeing Waste: Since anything that does not deliver value to the customer is waste, and customers do not use a majority of available features, implementing fewer features is almost always a good goal.
Tool 6 - Set Based Development: Structure teams so that members inform each other about the entire set of possible solutions to a problem rather than a back and forth response to specific proposals. The intersection of sets of possibility will more quickly identify workable solutions.
Tool 8 - The Last Possible Moment: Delay decisions as long as they can responsibly be delayed in order to more fully explore alternatives, and to allow the correct design to take shape through feedback from customers. The implication is that systems must be architected skillfully so that they can accommodate a variety of different directions in the future.
Tool 10 - Pull Systems: Make sure the team knows what needs to be accomplished, and help them set up mechanisms for signaling when they need work from others, but demand that they schedule themselves.
Tool 21 - Measurements: Don't measure the performance of individual components; this can lead to local optimization at the expense of the product as a whole. Instead, measure one level above where each person or team is working. Individuals are measured on the success of the team. Feature teams are measured on the success of the product, and so on.
The bibliography at the end also deserves a special mention, as it is thorough and obviously contains books covering most of the concepts discussed in the main text. A good education in this field could probably begin by simply reading through the books listed there from first to last.
Overall an excellent an informative book with many practical insights.
One of the best management books ever written.......2007-03-12
Very no-nonsense review of best development practices with NO RELIGIOUS FERVOR. Unlike most other books, the authors cover all the best practices and all argument actually make sense.
Customer Reviews:
A must read for today' technology executives.......2007-07-11
Mike Cohn comes up with another gem of a book to assist technology development teams in creating the right products in a timely fashion for today's fast paced world. If you're in the web 2.0 space where continuous innovation is the norm, then this is a must read book. Even if you're in the more traditional industries developing products, this book will be a great help for you whether you've already made the jump to agile development or are considering it.
One thing not covered in this book, but is a must for making any significant change in the way that your staff performing their jobs is to make sure that you're prepared for it. If you're considering making the jump to agile development, I strongly urge you to first consider the people side of change management to make sure that your company and teams have the support that they need to make and then maintain the change. I guarantee that there will be resistance to switching to Agile development from some portion of your team, so be prepared for it by doing your own research into change management. A possible suggestion would be a Prosci Change Management course, but there are others.
Once you've done your preparation for managing the people side of change management, then Mike's book is then a great cookbook on the methodology of succeeding at Agile development. It contains real world examples and suggested best practices to help your teams succeed and have fun doing it.
Nice..........2007-05-23
It's a nice book on the topic but definitely not a must-read. Cohn has good tips and general advices but the book focus lots more on planning than estimating.
Excellent book on excecution of an agile project.......2007-04-27
Agile Estimating and Planning was just the book we needed. We'd read many books on the topic of lean development but most of those books give you the principles but say very little about actual application. They typically leave it at "see what works for you". Mike Cohn's book deals with how to make those very hard decisions when you first start. What is the norm and what works well. Not only did it provide those guidlines for those decisions it explained the why's behind it. For a non-agile project to transition into agile it is often difficult to hiccup at the beginning specially when skeptics are lerking around to point out things that are not working well. Although iterative improvment is still the name of the game it doesn't hurt to have your first 2 iterations come out as a success which is what happened to us. With Mike's help we were able to make some good decisions from the start that were winners with confidence and ease. We will continue to refine them but having a good base to work from was very helpful.
The book literally goes through how to make key decisions for the most difficult challenges you are faced with when starting an agile project. We couldn't have done it without this book. I highly recommend it and I've ordered several copies for my project managers and team leads.
Saviz Artang
This is a great book that keeps on giving advice.......2007-04-01
This is such a great book for reading and re-reading. I find new nuggets of information each time I go back to it. If I get stuck, or a situation arises, I know I can turn to this book for my answer. It took me a bit to get into this book the first time. I think it was because I thought his first book User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series)was so darn good. What could Mike possibly add to that piece of work? Well, a lot. Every team should have this book available for consultation. It is the next best thing to having Mike there in person!
Good overview for agile project managers.......2007-03-11
This is an excellent book for project managers who are interested in using agile methods. I'm a developer that has been on several agile projects and this book was very interesting to me, but I think it really hits the project management sweet spot. Some things that I gleaned from this book that I hadn't found in other books: epic stories, themes, burndown bar charts. The author has a very readable writing style. Agile practitioners should definitely read this book. It does possess some new information that other books (the XP series of books) do not cover. Highly recommended!
Average customer rating:
- Great book on paterns, and XP
- Super Book - The best of them all
- Industrial strength book
- Required Reading - none better
- Excellent book on principled software development
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Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices
Robert C. Martin
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Test Driven Development: By Example (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series)
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Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
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Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide
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ASIN: 0135974445 |
Customer Reviews:
Great book on paterns, and XP.......2007-03-18
This book covers the most common, and usefull design patterns. Each patter is presented in plain egnlish, with full examples.
In addition to patterns this book covers the principles surounding patterns that make them truely usefull.
Super Book - The best of them all.......2006-11-10
In my role as an architect and a J2EE evangelist, I have to teach a lot about OOAD principles, the Java language and Agile techniques. There are lots of books in my armour that capture the gist of many of these practices and techniques. But none in my opinion better than this book.
Robert Martin is a master at explaining OOAD concepts and applying them to the Agile methodology. For instance, the Agile practices mandate certain practices that need to be implemented in the upfront design and conception of the project. This is in contrast to the methodologies that were hitherto used that emphaisized methodology over design.
This book provides that point of fusion. A great achievement indeed! Concepts such as dependency injection and the Single Responsibility Principle were explained before they became mainstream design tenets.
Industrial strength book.......2005-04-13
Many OO/Patterns books are written as an introduction to the concepts and gloss over the nuances of building software in the real world. This book takes on the nitty gritty of what most developers face day to day. While it does include the gratuitous "student registration" example, this book actually delves into issues such as integrating legacy code. It also actually implements bad design choices before moving on to better solutions, and even these solutions are described in terms of trade-offs between competing forces. Also, by discussing specific Design Patterns in more depth than the cannonical format, I had a few "a-ha" moments when patterns I never quite understood emerged. I would/should have given this book 5 stars, but I had problems with the layout (oversized pages/no margins), the inconsitencies of diagrams (clouds and UML), and the disjoint feeling that the book was a collection of separately written articles, although the author does tie them nicely together. All in all, this is a must have.
Brian
brian_x7@yahoo.com
Required Reading - none better.......2005-02-11
Absolutely no one writes as well, knows as much, or has as much to say about designing world class programs as Robert Martin. This book should be on every serious programmer's shelf; whatever language you happen to be programming in.
Excellent book on principled software development.......2005-01-26
If you always wondered how to find the "right" abstractions - which are nowadays called objects - in your programming. This book gives you an idea what the guiding principles should be.
Don't expect it to be a silver bullet. It is neither the best book on agile software development practices nor the best book on design patterns, but it is the best book on sound principles behind software development. So I believe that some of the content will still be valid in the post OOD-world, whatever it is going to be.
So if you ever wondered, why sometimes programms look good, and most of the times they are just outright ugly, this book gives you a couple of pointers where to look for the problems.
Two more things: a) it is actually fun to read, b) from my experience in project management and software development I don't believe the radical XP approach will establish itself - it doesn't give managers the feeling they are in control. Not that they are with the classic waterfall, but they think they do. Some practices such as pair programming and test-driven development will become best practices - or are they already? The rest will probably be dropped once the fad is over.
Customer Reviews:
"The" book on User Stories - Excellent, well written, right length.......2007-01-16
I work for a consulting company that trains in both agile methods as well as more antiquated lean UP. I was looking for "the" book on user stories. If I wanted to recommend "the" book for use cases, it was "Writing Effective Use Cases" by Alistair Cockburn.
I received this book on Tuesday and had finished reading it by Thursday. It is very well laid out, the chapters are the right length, it has excellent recommendations and it is simply well written.
I'm teaching a class on Agile Requirements Exploration on the 1/22/07 and it will be this book I recommend for further study. It's all someone needs to understand the essence of user stories.
I learned quite a bit reading this book and if you're looking for "the" book on user stories, look no further.
Good, but next is better.......2007-01-12
This book has some good stuff in it, especially the INVEST criteria for a good Story. But as far as practical application, Mike's other book, Agile Estimating and Planning, is better.
If you are a business or requirements analyst or a Product Owner, get this one. If you are a ScrumMaster, get both.
Don't be confused........2007-01-11
This book is not about testimonials, this book is about using User Stories (Index Cards) on an Agile Project. It's a very good explanation of user stories.
A must have for any Product Owner.......2006-12-14
Mike has a gift when it comes to explaining concepts in a format that everyone can understand regardless of their technical level. This book is one of them.
User Stories seem like a simple concept, but they can be elusive at first to people used to writing 200-page requirements documents. Writing good stories that stand-up and hold through a project iteration is sometimes more an art than a science.
Mike's book provides insight on ways to help add a little "science" into the mix with practical examples and bullet points of key concepts divided into business and technical groupings. After all stories are supposed to bridge the gap between business and technology and do away with "throw it over the wall" approach to requirements and foster conversation and collaboration.
This is a great book for any Product Owner or development team member who's looking to better understand User Story development. A must have for Scrummasters!
The definitive reference on User Stories.......2006-12-10
User stories are a method of capturing requirements which was originally introduced in the extreme programming method. User stories are commonly described as "a promiss for a conversation" and are often recorded on index cards (at least, originally). Mike Cohn's book takes the user story practice out of Extreme Programming and shows how it can be used in general in different methods.
The key-idea of user stories is that conversations and understanding via documentation is often wasteful and inefficient. User Stories describes a requirement in such a way that we can remember it in the future. At the time the requirement is ready to be implemented, we'll discuss the requirement in more detail. That way we can delay some of the requirement analysis and move it closer to when we implement it. This reduces "requirement inventory" and can lead to less waste in the development process. Whether and how to use user stories in your project depends on many different variables and user stories explained will explain the details of user stories, the different types of user stories and give plenty of examples. All this is needed for a better understanding and for deciding how user stories can help you on your project.
The book is well written, though personally I found that it contained too much text. There was quite much repetition and that made the book slightly boring after a 100 pages. It could have been written with less text, in my opinion. Another drawback of the book was that the examples given didn't feel real enough. It would have been nice to cover some larger projects and also discuss how user stories would work on these.
In conclusion, User Stories Applied is the definitive and only reference on user stories and when interested in user stories or when working with user stories, this is an absolute must!
Average customer rating:
- Top-notch tome
- Excellent
- Basic libraries coverage with a good example application.
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Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action
Dave Crane ,
Bear Bibeault , and
Tom Locke
Manufacturer: Manning Publications
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Ajax in Practice
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ASIN: 1933988037 |
Book Description
Prototype and Scriptaculous are libraries that extend standard Ajax. They make it easier to program Ajax and provide powerful features like drag and drop and animation. In this book, developers learn by playing and see how the libraries work in the real world.
As experience with Ajax increases, developers want the standard Ajax capabilities they repeatedly use to be preprogrammed for them--and that's exactly what Ajax libraries do for them. They reduce the pain of handling cross-browser inconsistencies, they add useful language features, and provide sophisticated functionality. Of these, Prototype is the most popular JavaScript and Ajax framework for low-level user interface features such as animation, drag and drop, and pre-built widgets. Together, they free the developer up to concentrate on building the application. They make a rich user experience easy to achieve.
This book guides the reader through the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries feature-by-feature. In just 350 pages, readers will find over 100 small working examples to help them explore the libraries. As well, they will develop a web-based image gallery that teacher them how to use Prototype and Scriptaculous in the real-world.
Customer Reviews:
Top-notch tome.......2007-06-25
Javascript has exploded onto the web development scene in the last few years, and powers much of the web 2.0 and Ajax revolution. Every web developer now needs to know how to do common Ajax tasks. Thankfully, Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action makes it both easy and enjoyable.
This is a comprehensive book. The size (510 pages) was initially intimidating, but Prototype and Scriptaculous In Action is exceedingly well written and a genuine pleasure to read. The thorough and thoughtful organization of the book provides some real structure to the discussion, making complex subjects easily digestible. This is the defacto bible of Prototype and Scriptaculous, and these days I turn to this book more than anything else on my shelf.
The book is divided up into four multi-chapter parts, any of which could stand on it's own as a definitive guide. The chapters are full of useful examples, and there's strong emphasis given to migrating existing sites to Prototype and Scriptaculous, which is a major plus. You could turn to any section of the book and immediately see how to inject some new behavior into your existing application, but if you take the time to read from cover-to-cover you'll be rewarded with some deep understanding of both the libraries and Javascript itself.
I'll summarize the four parts of the book:
Part 1, Getting Started, introduces the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries, focusing heavily on Prototype and Ajax. There's a lot of information on re-designing an existing site for Ajax. Two full chapters are devoted to Prototype's Ajax features. You can get up and running VERY quickly after glancing through these chapters. There's also a lot of depth, and consideration is given to the pervasive effects Ajax has on architectural issues and the new ways that an application will have to manage HTTP traffic.
Part 2, Scriptaculous Quickly, covers effects, controls and drag-n-drop. This is hands-down the best Scriptaculous documentation currently available, anywhere. The core effects are explored and tweaked, and there's lot of very practical examples demonstrating some of the niftiest stuff, like running effects in parallel versus sequentially. And the drag-and-drop coverage is incredibly clear, making it easy, almost trivial, to implement. The Scriptaculous coverage is indispensable, and you'll return to it again and again if you implement Scriptaculous-enabled pages.
Part 3, Prototype in Depth, explores Prototype's Javascript-oriented features. There's a fantastic chapter on functions contexts, and the discussion of closures is one of the best I've seen. There's a lot of information about Javascript fundamentals, and how Prototype can be used to implement inheritance, address arrays, and manipulate the DOM in the browser.
And finally, Part 4 Advanced Topics, has two unrelated chapters. The first chapter overhauls an example app, giving it a Prototype and Scriptaculous makeover. The last chapter is about integration with Ruby on Rails. Prototype was initially written as the Ajax interface to Rails, so there's some strong integration.
As a long-time enterprise web developer, dealing with Javascript has always been a chore. But now I actually (gasp) look forward to tasks that involve Javascript. I'm a convert, and I have Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action to thank.
Excellent.......2007-05-22
I wrote a longer review that Amazon has apparently lost. Oh well. This is an excellent book, very well written. The authors are the rarest kind of technical author: they can actually construct prose that is pleasant to read, not deadly boring, but which works well as a reference book later. The book's organized thoughtfully--it's certainly much more than just an API reference. There's also quite a lot of general advanced Javascript information here, too.
There's at least one other book on these libraries in production from Pragmatic Programmers. If you're considering that, I strongly suggest downloading the sample chapters of both books and comparing. The Crane book is much more appealing to me (not to mention it's available now, not in six months).
Basic libraries coverage with a good example application........2007-04-19
This book lacked detailed coverage of the programming techniques and advanced topics of prototype and scriptaculous. The authors covered the basics by discussing only the API's of the libraries (more attention was given to scriptaculous API's, even though its usage is obvious and prototype API's are more extensive). With 500 pages and the libraries as the title, I expected details about the inner workings of the API's and discussions about its usages/ applications. Instead, 150 pages were devoted to verbose repetitive coverage of scriptaculous' API, which could easily have fitted into 50 pages at most. ALL of the info on scriptaculous could easily have been read online at its wiki site - the book provided no further insight (ch. 5 is especially useless)! Prototype's coverage was decent, but lacked details on several parts of its API. Although prototype and scriptaculous are tightly integrated with Rails, there was only 1 chapter devoted to its discussion, which served more like an overview than a usage guide. Based on content on the libraries alone, I would give this book 3 stars. However, if you're in need of an example application, then it may deserve 4 stars. This book provides a good example of applying prototype's ajax and scriptaculous web 2.0 techniques to a photo gallery website. It shows the advantages these libraries have over plain javascript and dhtml. The extra 100 pages wasted on scriptaculous would better serve Rails' RJS templates or a more complete/ thorough discussion of prototype. Of course it can be argued that the book is not titled, "Prototype, Scriptaculous, and Rails in Action," but it should be.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent.......2007-04-30
Simply the best treatment of object oriented design, patterns and practices I have ever read. Extremely well organized and easy to read. Should be in every software engineer's library.
Well done, with one exception.......2007-04-19
First, this book is well written and presents information in a constructive manner. It is well thought out, and is not just another C#/OOP/XP book.
Now for the bad news. One unnecessary oversight is the use of casts and "object" in some examples. Any author writing any C# book since 2005 must know that these idioms should no longer be encouraged. It is unacceptable for a book published in February 2007 to possess this flaw.
Generics, used in moderation, result in cleaner code that is also type-safe, and usually performs better due to the absence of boxing/unboxing. The authors should consider posting alternative examples that favor Generic types and collections on their errata web page. If you purchase this book, you would be well-advised to review the examples with a bias against the use of casts and the word "object".
To be entirely frank, I don't see how other reviewers can justify a five star rating.
Great title for OOP and Agile Methods.......2007-01-16
This book teaches both OOP and agile methods. The two are independent! The authors provide a brief introduction to UML as well. Some prior knowledge of fundamental OOP concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism are assumed. This is not a critical analysis of Agile or OOP. The book does not explain how agile methods can scale. That may be deficiency of agile methods. The book is blunt about Use Case Diagrams: useless (pardon the pun); with which I cannot agree more.
Except for one twenty-person project I worked on, I would advocate Agile for all the smaller projects I have done in recent years. I would highly recommend the book for all C# developers. Java developers would be better of with the previous Java version of the book.
Critical work on design and development.......2006-12-13
This book is amazingly great from start to finish. All the basics of good agile development are covered clearly and sensibly in the first section: what agile is, how to go about it, why testing and planning are so critical, and where refactoring fits in all of this. Design and general patters are hit in the second section, again in a clear, concise, and sensible fashion -- and with common sense thrown in.
The final two sections cover a real-world case study implementation of a payroll system. Here the rubber meets the asphalt: walking through use cases, building transactions based on smartly-chosen patterns, discussion of what patterns make sense where and why, implementation, packaging, and evolution.
I found myself shaking my head in wonder as I read this book and stumbled across one nugget of gold after another. Some bits of goodness pop out in the middle of nowhere simply because the authors are so well-versed in their domain that they're letting fly wisdom even when discussing other topics. An example of this is in the XP pairing session episode where some discussion of increment operator side effects is tossed in the middle of another discussion stream. You read that section once and pass over it, only to do a head check, bounce back and re-read it while nodding your head and saying "Yeah, that's absolutely right and I might not have caught that otherwise."
Another bit of greatness is the chapter on UML. The authors are emphatic about keeping UML tightly in check and using it only in specific cases where it makes clear sense. Mountains of UML diagrams are not the answer; the authors show where a few concise diagrams make perfect sense.
More goodness can be found throughout the book in the gems relating to any number of design issues such as a small example of a problem the authors put forth to students of their various design/patterns courses: build a coffee maker. The authors go through the most common result they see and show the specific problem areas of that solution -- and then show a solution that is amazing in its simplicity, elegance, and maintainability.
This book is a critical read for folks at any level of experience. I'm going to do my best to make sure it gets on the required reading list for developers at my company.
Absolutely required reading for every[...].......2006-11-22
Robert Martin is one of the smartest people I've ever talked with, and he is one of the best technical writers I've ever read.
This book is *the* most comprehensive and most valuable introduction and guide to Agile programming, with a full discussion of Agile principles, the "fourteen practices of eXtreme programming," full discussion of "spiking, splitting, velocity, iteration, test-driven development, refactoring, pair programming, five types of UML diagrams," and how to use all of this in real world .NET development.
There is no doubt in my mind that this book will make you a better programmer, will challenge you, will teach you, will take you beyond what you already know, and will entertain you along the way. Robert is as good as it gets.
This book is required reading. Do not hesitate.
Books:
- Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition
- Ajax For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
- America: The Last Best Hope (Volume II): From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom
- Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits (4th Edition)
- Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development (3rd Edition)
- ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition
- Beautiful Evidence
- Beginning Programming with Java For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
- Bridal Gowns: How to Make the Wedding Dress of Your Dreams
- Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 (Build Your Own)
Books Index
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Agile Software Development with SCRUM
Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series)
Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Best Practices (Microsoft))
