About Agile

The poet Basho said, “Do not try to imitate the old masters. Seek what they sought.” 

Here is my list of the masters of agile software development. (They are the first place to start if you are learning and a great place to go if you are looking to improve your practices.)

Stephen R Covey

Stephen Covey isn’t really a software developer. But he is on the top of my list. You need to read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It will change your life.

Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt

Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt are "the Pragmatic Programmers" an agile publishing and training company. The name comes from a book they wrote together, "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master."

I find their books to be insightful and easy to read. I personally own about 12 of their books and subscribe to 3 video podcasts. 

Martin Fowler

Martin Fowler is the Chief Scientist of ThoughtWorks.  Every programmer needs to read his book on Refactoring. 

He is really one of the great minds when it comes to agile software development and I try to read his "bliki" (a cross between a blog and a wiki) regularly. He has written great articles on topics like dependancy injection/inversion of control, continuous integration and eXtreme Programming.

ThoughtWorks produces several great agile tools that are worth looking at as well including Mingle, Cruise, and Twist.

Kent Beck

Kent Beck is wrote the book on eXtreme Programming (XP) and is one of the authors of JUnit testing framework. JUnit changed testing much in the way XP changed programming.

My favorite of his books by far is Test-Driven Development: By Example. I consider it to be a must-read as well.

Mary and Tom Poppendieck

Mary and Tom Poppendieck are famous for applying Lean Production Methodologies, like the Toyota Production System (TPS), to software development.

Their book, Implementing Lean Software Development, is another book on my list of must read books.

Ken Schwaber

Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland pioneered the Scrum software development methodology. Scrum speaks more to the management of software development than to specific practices.

Ken wrote a book on Scrum, "Agile Software Development with Scrum" with Mike Beedle. It is a good book but is a bit dated as current thoughts and best practices are not reflected in the book.

He also founded the Scrum Alliance (with Mike Cohn and Esther Derby) which provides certification and resources for ScrumMasters.

Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn is one of the founders of the Scrum Alliance and a well known author. Mike’s book on user stories, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, is a great resource when learning about agile planning.