Practices of an Agile Developer

Writing good software is hard — there are pitfalls everywhere. It's almost as if an evil demon is constantly whispering in your ear, tempting you to take this or that shortcut — a shortcut that will lead straight to disaster.

Don't let that bug-inducing devil win. Fight him with your own guardian angel to guide, promote, and protect your work and career. Fight him with the proven Practices of an Agile Developer.

In this book, we've collected the personal habits, ideas, and approaches of successful agile software developers and compiled them in a series of short, easy-to-digest tips. For each practice, we expose the evil demon's whisperings — the temptations or shortcuts he's trying to get you to take. And then we explain the agile practices that act as a guardian angel to protect your project and your career.

You could learn all this stuff the hard (and conventional) way, by trial and error,but this book can save you both time and pain. Read it, and you'll be a better developer — starting today.

1. Agile Software Development
2. Beginning Agility
1. Work for Outcome
2. Quick Fixes Become Quicksand
3. Criticize Ideas, Not People
4. Damn the Torpedoes, Go Ahead
3. Feeding Agility
5. Keep Up with Change
6. Invest in Your Team
7. Know When to Unlearn
8. Question Until You Understand
9. Feel the Rhythm
4. Delivering What Users Want
10. Let Customers Make Decisions
11. Let Design Guide, Not Dictate
12. Justify Technology Use
13. Keep It Releasable
14. Integrate Early, Integrate Often
15. Automate Deployment Early
16. Get Frequent Feedback Using Demos
17. Use Short Iterations, Release in Increments
18. Fixed Prices Are Broken Promises
5. Agile Feedback
19. Put Angels on Your Shoulders
20. Use It Before You Build It
21. Different Makes a Difference
22. Automate Acceptance Testing
23. Measure Real Progress
24. Listen to Users
6. Agile Coding
25. Program Intently and Expressively
26. Communicate in Code
27. Actively Evaluate Trade-Offs
28. Code in Increments
29. Keep It Simple
30. Write Cohesive Code
31. Tell, Don't Ask
32. Substitute by Contract
7. Agile Debugging
33. Keep a Solutions Log
34. Warnings Are Really Errors
35. Attack Problems in Isolation
36. Report All Exceptions
37. Provide Useful Error Messages
8. Agile Collaboration
38. Schedule Regular Face Time
39. Architects Must Write Code
40. Practice Collective Ownership
41. Be a Mentor
42. Allow People to Figure It Out
43. Share Code Only When Ready
44. Review Code
45. Keep Others Informed
9. Epilogue: Moving to Agility
1. Just One New Practice
2. Rescuing a Failing Project
3. Introducing Agility: The Manager’s Guide
4. Introducing Agility: The Programmer’s Guide
5. The End?

• A1. Resources
• A1.1. On the Web

This book in reality have very litttle to do with Agility. While the word is scattered around the book, then contents are sound advice to any programmer in any project or development team!

Heck, I recognize stuff in here from the 80-ties, so very little is new under the sun. But it is in fact a very good and compact guidebook to good practices and very easy to reread and apply to different situations.

If you are a programmer (aspiring or senior) you can learn something from this book.