Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed First Edition

I like the pragmatic tone of the book, its structure, "day in the life" pictures, case studies, and conclusions. Yet the authors indulge some Agile misconceptions and their case is riddled with straw man argumentation.Right from the start they set up a false dichotomy between agility and discipline, as if Agile is not a discipline or not disciplined--the authors define discipline as "process mastery, preparation, and courage." Agile done right is all this. And who hasn't seen undisciplined "discipline" (process-heavy approaches is what the authors intend here).The key to success, they argue, is balancing agility and discipline--what Agilist wouldn't agree?--by using their "risk-driven approach" as a "pragmatic means of reconciling the strengths and weaknesses of disciplined and agile methods." This requires assessing project personnel, criticality, size, culture, and dynamism to customize an agile-discipline hybrid that minimizes risks.Most Agilists I know are pragmatists, not purists, and do, in fact, use hybrids as needed. The "risk-driven approach" advocated here is a helpful way to quantify the risks and work towards a hybrid. But one caution: "Balancing agile and plan-driven methods requires exceptional people." Agreed, and the authors admit that because you need, and therefore find, more exceptional people in an Agile environment, you're more likely to find success by scaling Agile up than by paring plan-driven methods down.Other helpful points of clarification for "the perplexed:"- Agile is an "adaptive rather than predictive mind set."- "Agile is `planning driven,' rather than `plan-driven.'"- Agile defines quality as customer satisfaction vs. "specification and process compliance."- Agile's rapid growth and adoption is due to today's dynamic business environment and to "the resurgence of the philosophy that programming is a craft rather than an industrial process"- "Personnel turnover is a project's number one risk."Examples of straw man argumentation:- "The approaches have become adversarial." I've seen some healthy debate but most practitioners are looking for common ground.- "The primary difference between agile and plan-driven development practices deal with the design and architecture of the software. Agile methods advocate simple design, one that emerges as functionality is implemented." The authors spill a lot of ink demonstrating that simple may not be sufficient. Yet just a few pages earlier they point out: "Agilists speak of a `mentality of sufficiency'--doing only what is necessary." "Simple," then, actually means "sufficient" to the experienced Agilist.- The authors point out that Agile refactoring risks turning into costly redesign. And a plan-driven approach, where quality is defined as compliance to outdated specs and rework is common, improves on this how? Later they admit that Agile done right looks at each user story in context of the big picture.- They complain that getting all the stories done and integrated--particularly "tasks that fall between story cards"--often requires "police" action that "conflicts with agile philosophies." What they call "police" action I call "management" action and, yes, I admit it is often required.All in all, this book is recommended as it adds to the conversation and moves it in the right direction: whatever works! We've got too much work to do for infighting.

Great text. I really enjoyed reading this book by Boehm and Turner. Especially enjoyable was reading Grady Booch's comment in his forward that "there's a delightful irony in the fact that the very book you are holding in your hands has an agile pair of authors yet requires three times as many forewards as you'd find in any normal book".The material of this text is centered around the dimensions affecting method selection that the authors provide as the five critical factors involved in determining the relative suitability of agile or plan-driven methods in specific project situations. In most situations, the authors indicate that some mix of these methods will be needed after risk assessments are performed for each of the five factors.The radar plots provided that depict different levels of these five factors for example projects aid in understanding how projects differ. What is unfortunate is that the metrics for each of these factors (personnel, dynamism, culture, size, and criticality) are not explained well. Size, the number of personnel working on any given project, is the only concrete metric.However, I think the reader needs to understand that determining the level of each of the other four factors is really not meant to be exact. In fact, the presentation by the authors of various projects, although sometimes a bit detailed for the subject matter, help in the understanding that these metrics are relative.For example, unless personality tests are administered to all project personnel, it can be quite difficult to determine the level of Culture (the percent who thrive on chaos versus order), but guestimating an approximate level for this factor is probably good enough to get a sense of whether agile or plan-driven methodologies are more appropriate.Of the first few chapters of the text, I think the first two chapters that provide a background to the balancing agility and discipline problem are the most effective, followed by the chapter six summary chapter that lists the top conclusions of the discussion. The appendixes to this book, which comprise almost one-third of the text, are also very informative.Thirteen software development methodologies are presented side-by-side in Appendix A to enable the ability to compare each, although admittedly some of the methodologies are covered more extensively than others. And in Appendix E, some interesting industry statistics are presented from various studies, including a discussion on how much architecting is enough for a particular project, although there is some overlap with the well-written, thorough, recently-released text by McConnell called "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" (see my review).Overall, this book fits a gap on the software development bookshelf, and I am sure that other works of this genre will be released by other authors over the next couple years, as writing on this subject matter is still in its infancy.

The material, if you wade through it, is good. BUT this book is extreamly dry. And there is no excuse for that in the modern era. As the authors of the Head First series explain, dryness is not the way to impart knowledge. It simply doesn't work on humans. Good ideas, bad execution.Why mention COCOMO methodology? 95% of people will never hear of, or deal with it. That and other terms are assumed when the concepts they represent could be used. Basically they are caught not "writting to interfaces". I know they have written important technical books, but these days you can find book that impart the same knowledge in a more entetaining and memorable fashion.If you needed more factual evidence for a presentation on why or why not to use more agile software development methods, this may be your book. If you are looking to learn the merits of agile development, this is not your book.

I don't think most people understand how hard it is to product a book like this. People are happy to sell their methodology, and promote their views and experiences, but it's all anecdotal. This book is a dig for hard facts. I hope it's updated regularly with newer data.One reviewer asked for more of a practitioner approach. Wow, what a waste that would have been. This book is geared to looking at the outputs of what practitioners are doing. To actually present a methodology would have been bizarre.Dry and academic? Not for me. I so desperately wanted some bloody facts to counter all the hype, I would have been angry at anything but a measured, fact-focused book.It's a shame that academics are more tightly integrated with practice. At least our fads would be fact based.

A different way to manage large projects when you need to find the best methodology to adopt

This is a good comparison of the best practice of Agile versus "traditional" software engineering. It does however assume you have already read the books on both sides and understand the basic tenets of each approach. Don't buy this expecting it to cover the two methodologies it simply compares and gives guidance about where each method fits best. As such its an excellent guide for the bewildered project manager or team lead.

As a devil's advocate for both Agile and Plan-driven approaches this book is excellent, pulling together a lot of useful information and providing a good commentary on it. It is marred slightly by evaluating agile techniques such as YAGNI in isolation and thus giving them a poor write-up. These techniques were never intended to be used in isolation; that message seems to be missing. But don't let that put you off.

Sehr gut!