Manning Early
Access Program
Becoming Agile
EARLY ACCESS EDITION
... in an imperfect world
Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky

MEAP Release: September 2007
Softbound print: January 2009 (est.) | 400 pages
ISBN: 1-933988-25-8
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Table of Contents, MEAP Chapters & Resources

Table of Contents         Resources 
Part 1: Introduction
 1. Moving to Agile - FREE
 2. The Story of ACME Media (Our ongoing case study) - AVAILABLE

Part 2: Getting started
 3. Are we ready for Agile? - AVAILABLE
 4. Where can you add agility? Take this assessment - AVAILABLE
 5. The importance of executive support - AVAILABLE
 6. Improve Buy-in by Creating a "Core Team" - AVAILABLE
 7. Developing an Agile Mindset—the first step of leading the transition - AVAILABLE
 8. Don't reinvent the wheel: injecting agile in your current process - AVAILABLE
 9. Selecting a pilot project - AVAILABLE

Part 3: Kicking off
 10. Is this project worth it: Feasibility - AVAILABLE
 11. Aligning the Pilot Team - AVAILABLE
 12. Feature cards—A tool for just enough planning
 13. Prioritizing the backlog
 14. Improving the Accuracy of our Estimates through Team Involvement

Part 4: Planning for agility
 15. Release planning—envision the overall schedule
 16. Iteration Planning—the nitty gritty details 		Part 5: Building the product
 17. Start your engines—Iteration Zero
 18. Delivering working software
 19. Are we done yet? - Monitoring and Tracking
 20. Testing—Did we do it right?

Part 6: Embracing change
 21. Dealing with issues during an iteration
 22. Gathering Customer Feedback
 23. Retrospectives
 24. Adapting: Reacting positively to change

Part 7: Delivering
 25. The release process

Part 8: Moving forward
 26. Evaluating the pilot
 27. Next steps
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DESCRIPTION

Agile principles have been a breath of fresh air to many development teams stuck in the middle of a rigid, process-driven environment. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to bring Agile into an existing organization with established people and practices. Becoming Agile shows you practical techniques and strategies to move from your existing process to an Agile process without starting from scratch.

Many books discuss Agile from a theoretical or academic perspective. Becoming Agile takes a different approach and focuses on explaining Agile from a ground-level point-of-view. Author Greg Smith, a certified ScrumMaster with dozens of Agile projects under his belt, presents Agile principles in the context of a case study that flows throughout the book.

Becoming Agile focuses on the importance of adapting Agile principles to the realities of your environment. While Agile purists have often discouraged a “partial-Agile” approach, the reality is that in many shops a “purist” approach simply isn't a viable option. Over the last few years, Agile authorities have begun to discover that the best deployments of Agile are often customized to the specific situation of a given company.

As well, Becoming Agile addresses the cultural realities of deploying Agile and how to deal with the needs of executives, managers, and the development team during migration. The author discusses employee motivation and establishing incentives that reward support of Agile techniques.

Becoming Agile will show you how to create a custom Agile process that supports the realities of your environment. The process will minimize risk as you transition to Agile iteratively, allowing time for your culture and processes to acclimate to Agile principles.

WHAT'S INSIDE:

About the Authors

Greg Smith is a certified ScrumMaster and a Senior Project Manager at Washington Mutual. Greg is also an instructor of Agile Project Management at Bellevue Community College. He has over 20 years of experience as a development manager, project manager, business analyst, and product manager. He has worked for large conglomerates, tiny start-ups, and medium size companies including: Philips Electronics, R.R. Donnelley, Oh Boy! Oberto, and the Seattle Times New Media group. He has spent time with various companies helping them create a custom Agile process that supports the realities of their environment. Greg's focus has been on iteratively migrating a company to Agile and actively involving the development team in the process. Greg provides consulting services but his main focus is bringing Agile practices into the companies that he works for. This background has given him insight into what it takes to sustain an Agile culture and process over time.

Dr. Ahmed Sidky guides organizations during their transition to agile software development. His research includes a value-based agile measurement index, known as the Sidky Agile Measurement Index, and a process framework for the adoption of agile practices. Dr. Sidky developed Dr. Agile (www.dragile.com), an online readiness assessment tool that helps guide organizations aspiring to adopt agile practices. He has worked as a software developer at some of the largest software firms in the Middle East and holds a Masters degree in Software Engineering from Virginia Tech (USA) with a research focus on Requirements Engineering and a doctorate in Agile Software Development Methodologies and Process Improvement. Dr. Sidky is a frequent speaker at international agile conferences.

About the Early Access Version

This Early Access version of Becoming Agile enables you to receive new chapters as they are being written. You can also interact with the authors to ask questions, provide feedback and errata, and help shape the final manuscript on the Author Forum

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