Alistair Cockburn

One of the best all around books on agile software development I've read, for the intermediate to expert developer. You could call this book "the _Pragmatic Programmer" of agile, because its more a collection of tips and patterns that depend on context, as opposed to a one-size fits all methodology.

It emphasizes the value of small teams, colocation, on site customers, and the importance of people over any technique or technology. If your team can get the people and communication issues figured out, most technology issues will resolve themselves, or so Cockburn argues and his Crystal methodology recommends just that. From my experience, if you get a good, small talented team with a cooperative customer, you are well on your road to success. Things like choice of programming language or TDD vs test-after dev become non-issues if you have smart people who can work together and improve together as they work.… (meer)

After reviewing every book I could find on use cases, this is the one that is making it into the office library. Part 1 addresses the different kinds of use case templates and the parts of those templates. Part 2 is a collection of topics related to use cases (including relating use cases to other types of requirements). Part 3 is an executive summary, or a review of the entire book.

The text was fun to read, but I expect I will get the most use from the downloadable Word template from the author's website and the list of pass/fail tests for the different template fields in the endpapers.… (meer)