Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide

The latest book to succumb to my ravenous appetite for software development is Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide.

More than any of the other books, this book convinced me how astray we’ve all been lead astray by waterfall based development.  While most of my consulting career has been spent adapting waterfall to meet client needs and the needs of the consulting organization, it’s interesting to realize that the fundamental approach to development was wrong.

I particularly liked this books coverage of details.  It talks about how iterative development got started and how current agile practices are linked to iterative development.  It also has great coverage of scrup, xp, up, and evo methodogies — and how they work together well and places where they don’t work together well.

All in all, this is a great guide for people who are open to better understanding what they do well and don’t do well in their software development.