This is a good book to get an understanding of Agile concepts. It was helpful to review it when I was preparing for a job interview. ( )

This delivers pretty much exactly what it promises. After reading this book I think I have a pretty clear, high level, understanding of what Agile can do, how it works, and what it looks like from the inside and the outside. Highly recommended for anyone involved in a software development organization who is wondering whether Agile is something they should be considering adopting.

My one criticism is that the version I read needs to be gone over by an editor well versed in Standard English. This in no way affects the readability or understandability of the book, I just found it a little irritating. YMMV.

(This is a review of a LibraryThing Early Reviewers copy of the book)

I’ve worked as a software developer in Agile environments since around 2014 and have enjoyed the productivity and quality gains that this paradigm provides. This workplace loosely implements Agile and accomplishes amazing feats of productivity. In this book, Ashar distills Agile concepts into easy-to-read chunks that can be quickly implemented. This book empowers managers to organize their team’s work more effectively so that customers can benefit more readily.

Ashar begins this guide by stating that most software shops do not implement Agile and instead organize their work according to so-called “waterfall” principles. This causes significant problems in their management like delays in deadlines and cost overruns. Through iterative work, the Agile movement offers a way out of this morass, and this book presents a concise outline of the details. This movement has matured with success over the years, and multiple options exist for its implementation. The chapter on charting metrics provides especially strong suggestions that were new to me for managing work.

Although most software workplaces stand to gain significantly from Agile concepts, many other descriptions of Agile exist, and this book offers few new concepts to the movement. It simply offers a concise presentation in one place. It would have been nice to have read about how the movement has recently evolved with distributed workplaces under COVID. Here, Ashar presents little on-the-ground research or unique learning, and that is unfortunate.

The intended audience consists of IT project managers, but software developers (i.e., coders) can also gain from learning how to work under this paradigm. Readers should note that every component of Agile organization need not be implemented in every workplace. Books like this should be seen as a compilation of options rather than an exact checklist to work through. Through this book, teams can become self-organizing, and all their members, empowered. ( )