In 2005 I began teaching an Agile Project Management course at Bellevue Community College. Although my students noted I was a bit “wordy,” they appreciated the real-world case study I used for the course, based on my own agile experiences. I told the students I had created the course because most available agile training was based on perfect world explanations of agile practices and the creation of a pure agile environment. The case study used in the course showed what it was like to start transitioning to agile versus what it looked like after a team had been using agile for many years.

Positive student feedback made me wonder if a book on transitioning to agile would be of value to the software community. I began searching through the shelves of Barnes & Noble and through the inventory available on Amazon.com. I was surprised to see that very few books addressed agile migration, and I could not find any books that demonstrated what the process looked like from day one through the completion of a pilot project. Maybe it was time to find out if I had any writing skills!

Needless to say, Manning saw the value in the idea and helped me refine the concept. Manning also sought out experts in the agile community who provided unfiltered feedback on the first chapters of the book (reviewers, you were anonymous to us, but we want you to know we appreciate all of your feedback and we worked quite a bit of it into the book).

As I started writing the book I kept receiving feedback that I needed to discuss agility levels within an organization. Reviewers wanted a tool for assessing their ability to use agile and also for measuring their agility at the organization level, similar to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). I was not an authority in the assessment field, so I sought out an expert and came across Ahmed Sidky, creator of the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI).

At first I just wanted permission to use Ahmed’s assessment materials, but as we spoke more on the phone it felt like we were two lost agile brothers who had spent a lifetime apart. Although our software experiences were completely different, Ahmed and I were in synch with our core agile beliefs. So much so that Ahmed signed on to not only provide the assessment content, but also to coauthor and refine the book with me. He suggested great ways to organize the content and also provided insight into agile practices where my experience was light. His contribution was invaluable and helped take the book to another level.

I am proud of our final product and I hope our experiences do help others become agile.

Greg Smith