I keep coming back to this book for the past 20 years now. The first and second edition are two completely different books.
By reading them both, you as the reader can get a good feel about the origins and evolution of Extreme Programming during those early years. For me, both books provide the much needed foundation for a human approach towards software development.
The ideas in this book advocate for social change, while breaking with the habits of the prevalent Waterfall approach, which unfortunately is still very much alive and kicking. This book, both the first and the second edition, are very important reads.
"In this second edition of Extreme Programming Explained, Kent Beck organizes and presents five years' worth of experiences, growth, and change revolving around XP. If you are seriously interested in understanding how you and your team can start down the path of improvement with XP, you must read this book."
- Francesco Cirillo, Chief Executive Officer, XPLabs S.R.L. "The first edition of this book told us what XP was-it changed the way many of us think about software development. This second edition takes it farther and gives us a lot more of the 'why' of XP, the motivations and the…
This book is the story of Semco, a Brazilian company that is widely known for it’s worker participation and democratic work environment.
I personally believe that the purpose of any kind of organization, besides earning money, is to give back to its community. Ricardo Semler, as the majority owner of Semco, took this idea and turned it up to eleven. The results have been staggering.
The book was first published in 1988. This means the author was introducing concepts that put the quality of workers before everything else during the 1980’s. For many organizations today, the ideas from this book are still quite futuristic to say the least. That’s why the book is still very much relevant and a fun read.
There are many creative professions where the performers practice their skills more often compared to the actual time they do the actual work.
Software development is widely considered as a creative profession. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fall into the category of professions where its practitioners hone their skills. This book discusses a coaching strategy where software teams can periodically practice and improve their technical practices.
“Samman” is the Swedish word for “together”. Organisations that invest in technical coaching increase their business success. This book is a real eye-opener for anyone who likes to improve their approach to team coaching. It lays out the groundwork for improving the technical practices of software teams.
Samman Technical Coaching is an approach to Agile training that focuses on technical questions concerning how code is written. It is a highly effective way of increasing agility in your software development organization. The first part of the Samman method involves the coach working in an ensemble with development teams, programming in their production codebase. This hands-on mentoring is accompanied by daily “learning hour” sessions for mastering particular techniques. In this book you will discover how to put Samman into practice, improve your coding procedures and how you collaborate. It is a practical guide for aspiring and experienced coaches looking…
The practice of Test-Driven Development has proven to be one of the major differentiators in writing quality software. Based on 15+ years of experience, this book is my attempt to teach about the heuristics that are involved when writing loosely coupled, maintainable and readable unit tests.
