books

The agile samurai

When you have done so many projects from scratch, using legacy code… different type of customers: banks, telecoms, retail, … in different type of companies (big, small, startups…), you always move to the next project thinking that you will do better the next time. But, how?

For me Scrum changed how things could be done better. Agile is what this book is about, but I, personally, feel that both are really connected. The names of the meetings or events are different but, how they are organize look similar.

The book is about how to execute your projects in a way that your customer feel more confident about the job that your are doing. It is not only about agile, it is about how to execute projects in a way that we can deal with changes and still have quality; having immediate feedback about the current status; how to be ready for production from the beginning.

Not all the customers are the same, not all the product owners are the same, not all the companies are the same, in conclusion: not all the XXX are the same.

I like the idea of Inception Desk. It is really good to have everyone in the team working in the big picture as an approach to start. As a mirror where everybody is looking how the project look for him and how the things are going to be. After that you can start and change the things later, if you need it.

In general the book is good for: to feel how it could be if you organize the project in a agile way; what are going to be the problems; how you could engage the customer/product owner; how the team should work; how testing and continous deployment should work; how transparent is going to be the status of the project; how you deal with the changes from the beginning… A lot of things together in a few pages :).

To know more, you should read it.

Thanks to Carlos Díez to lend me the book.