Foreword

From Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices

I’m writing this foreword right after having shipped a major release of the Eclipse open source project. I’m still in recovery mode, and my mind is bleary. But one thing remains clearer than ever: that people, not processes, are the key to shipping a product. Our recipe for success is simple: work with individuals obsessed with shipping software, develop with lightweight processes that are tuned to each team, and adapt constantly.

Double-clicking on developers from our teams reveals individuals who consider programming the focus of development. Not only do they write code; they digest it constantly to maintain an understanding of the system. Validating designs with code provides feedback that’s crucial for getting confidence in a design. At the same time, our developers understand the importance of patterns, refactoring, testing, incremental delivery, frequent builds, and other best-practices of XP that have altered the way we view methodologies today.

Skill in this style of development is a prerequisite for success in projects with high technical risk and changing requirements. Agile development is low-key on ceremony and project documentation, but it’s intense when it comes to the day-to-day development practices that count. Putting these practices to work is the focus of this book.

Robert is a longtime activist in the object-oriented community, with contributions to C++ practice, design patterns, and object-oriented design principles in general. He was an early and vocal advocate of XP and agile methods. This book builds on these contributions, covering the full spectrum of agile development practice. It’s an ambitious effort. Robert makes it more so by demonstrating everything through case studies and lots of code, as befits agile practice. He explains programming and design by actually doing it.

This book is crammed with sensible advice for software development. It’s equally good whether you want to become an agile developer or improve the skills you already have. I was looking forward to this book, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Erich Gamma

Object Technology International