Good reference for first timers in Agile and XP
This book is a very good reference to extreme programming and agile. I am a first timer to agile and xp. I find this book extremely useful. It also explains other open source options for .net like nunit, nant, cruisecontrol.net and nmock. This should be a good start for beginners as book has easy and simple language. For experienced people I can't comment.
for agile this sure talks a lot about tools
chapters 1-4 = 5 stars
chapters 5-8 = 2 stars (i really hate the idea of focusing on tools in an agile book, but i can see how NUnit supports testing, NMock supports open/close design and testing, Cruisecontrol supports continuous integration, and how NAnt helps with continuous integration and automation of building/tests... etc etc. Basically if the author focused more on why we use those tools in xp as opposed to how to use the tools i'd be more happy with the presentation of them.)
chapters 9-15 = 4 stars (i really skimmed through most of this because it was a really slow paced plodding walk through test driven development that could have been easily summed up in one example user story or two... i felt it was just there to fill up pages. It was, however, very thorough and, for the highly unimaginative, it could be useful)
Pretty good intro
I picked up several copies of this book for my developer group to jump-start our progress towards test-driven development and agile programming.
It's a very good introduction to Extreme Programming practices and the use of some of the tools used thereby. If you have a .NET development environment, this book is one of the few that you can pick up that isn't terribly dated or otherwise useless.
Good solid advice and walkthroughs. An easy read, helps develop the concepts.
Some flaws:
1. (In my opinion) the examples of creating user stories were idealized almost to the point of hilarity. I've never found a group of customers that were willing to work in the way described -- but treated as an idealization, its otherwise okay.
2. The section on using NMock is out of date, since NMock2 is out and it has completely different functions and methods. Part of the trouble with describing tools -- goes out of date quickly.
3. No real discussion of Team Foundation Server, which handles elements of NUnit and CruiseControl. Probably because TFS itself is so new, there are relatively few books about it at this time.
However, I think these are minor (sometimes unavoidable) points that don't really detract from an otherwise solid presentation.
I recommend this book if you want to bring XP to your .NET developers group.
Extreme book on Extreme Programming, two-thumbs up :)
Practical to the point book on agile software process.. Very nicely written, great examples. It covers the tools like NUnit, NAnt, CruiseControl etc + the whole extreme process - like user interactions / building user stories - building protypes - the design phase, implimentation phase and the testing and delivery, everything in a very interesting and light weight manner. So much interesting that I went through on the week end and never get lost. Authors, Greg Pearman and James Goodwill, did a great job in explaining this extremely mis-understood process. Most people that i know just take it a Unit-testing or a pair-programming thing.. thats all.. when you read this book you'll understand that there is lot more than these important issues especially the customer's needs. Great book a must have for every developer/team-lead even if you are not following this process. Cheers :) Shams
