

Ask HN: My University's library needs suggestions for books on Agile Development - mosselman

User research of my University&#x27;s library has shown that there is a need for books on Agile Development. Do you guys have any suggestions?
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adrianhoward
My usual list of book recommendations is as follows:

For general practical guides I'd look at one or both of:

* "Practices of an Agile Developer" [http://amzn.to/9B7hJg](http://amzn.to/9B7hJg), which talks about various practices in a fairly methodology independent way. The reason I really like it is that it has some excellent pointers for checking when adoption is/isn't working.

* "The Art of Agile Development" is another nice book [http://amzn.to/bksP7T](http://amzn.to/bksP7T) in a similar vein. This is more process-prescriptive though (they're talking about a varient of Extreme Programming)

I'd also also take the time to read the seminal books on the two most
important (in my opinion) agile methods:

* Agile Software Development with Scrum [http://amzn.to/bOkPZ1](http://amzn.to/bOkPZ1) \- the book that formalized Scrum

* Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change - the book that formalized XP. Read both the first [http://amzn.to/cdLAtx](http://amzn.to/cdLAtx) and second [http://amzn.to/bqMhEa](http://amzn.to/bqMhEa) editions if you get a chance. They're interestingly different.

I'd also add the various books on Lean by Mary & Tom Poppendieck
[http://amzn.to/9wsASi](http://amzn.to/9wsASi) and also 'Kanban' by David J
Anderson to the list [http://amzn.to/en6PQ2](http://amzn.to/en6PQ2) as well.

You might also find these of interest:

* The Scrum Guide - [http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides](http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides)

* The Agile Atlas - [http://agileatlas.org/](http://agileatlas.org/)

* The Agile Alliance's Guide to Agile Practices - [http://guide.agilealliance.org/](http://guide.agilealliance.org/)

lots of useful info there ;-)

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mosselman
Thanks for the great list. I will go through it and pass on the suggestions.

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memracom
The most important one is this:
[http://agilemanifesto.org/](http://agilemanifesto.org/)

Yes, it is only 3 paragraphs and a title, but if you want it in book form you
can print it out and put it between some covers. The important thing is to
read those 3 paragraphs carefully and to think about them. Avoid getting
caught up on the bandwagon of some management methodology that claims to be
Agile, because it probably isn't.

And read Clean Code by Robert Martin, one of the writers of the Agile
Manifesto. One of the things encouraged by Agile is TDD, that is to say, a
cycle of coding that starts by writing a failing test, then writing code to
pass the test and then refactoring code to be better according to principles
like DRY and YAGNI.

If you work in this Red-Green-Refactor cycle, then you will have a tough time
when faced with a tangle of spaghetti code written in Java or C++. That's when
books like Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers come in
handy.

In general, steer clear of books about Agile, and focus on books that teach
something real, but happen to fit into the Agile Manifesto philosophy. Talk to
some developers that you know are truly Agile developers, not practitioners of
a methodology, and ask them for book recommendations.

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andrewcooke
i like [http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Software-Development-
Cooperative...](http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Software-Development-Cooperative-
Edition/dp/0321482751) (cockburn's cooperative game), but i am not sure if
it's suitable for a library.

i guess what i mean is, that i think it's a great book for a developer. but
it's not very prescriptive, so may not be great for teaching. it's more about
trying to get you to think than telling you what to do. imho.

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mosselman
Thank you. You might be right, but then again I think that when it comes to a
bigger collection of books you could say that this book is just one of many.
So having it prescribe is not such a bad thing when you keep in mind that it
is just ONE of the ways to do things.

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debacle
Code Complete and Rapid Development should be in any software engineering
library.

~~~
mosselman
Thanks, I will have a look at it.

