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Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results This book does a good job of describing the methods employed at Sprintpcs.com … over 250 people practicing Feature Driven Development and reporting their progress to me at the monthly operations review.” –Scott B. Relf, Chief Marketing Officer, Sprint PCS “A tremendous contribution to the literature in the field. This should be required reading for all development teams going forward.” –John F. Yuzdepski, VP and GM, Openwave Systems A breakthrough approach to managing agile software developmentAgile methods might just be the alternative to outsourcing. However, agile development must scale in scope and discipline to be acceptable in the boardrooms of the Fortune 1000. In Agile Management for Software Engineering, David J. Anderson shows managers how to apply management science to gain the full business benefits of agility through application of the focused approach taught by Eli Goldratt in his Theory of Constraints. Whether you’re using XP, Scrum, FDD, or another agile approach, you’ll learn how to develop management discipline for all phases of the engineering process, implement realistic financial and production metrics, and focus on building software that delivers maximum customer value and outstanding business results.Coverage includes: Making the business case for agile methods: practical tools and disciplines How to choose an agile method for your next project Breakthrough application of Critical Chain Project Management and constraint-driven control of the flow of value Defines the four new roles for the agile manager in software projects–and competitive IT organizations Whether you’re a development manager, project manager, team leader, or senior IT executive, this book will help you achieve all four of your most urgent challenges: lower cost, faster delivery, improved quality, and focused alignment with the business.
Customer Review: IF…
Abraham Lincoln once asked something like, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” The answer is four. “Just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it so.” Just because you want to call some development practice “Agile” doesn’t make it so. In this book, David Anderson makes a case for calling Theory of Constraints the underlying definition of Agile software development practices. The principle tie is that a key measure in the Theory of Constraints is called Throughput; the amount of value delivered to the customer. Agile methods pride themselves as delivering value to the customer quickly. Based on the Theory of Constraints definition, the Feature Driven Development (FDD) method, Anderson’s personal expertise, turns out to be the most Agile of all.
In making the case for the Theory of Constraints based approach, Anderson has given us a lot of formulas and metrics for looking at software projects. This is the most thorough treatment of the subject I have seen yet. I wasn’t fully satisfied with the metrics as I felt the book didn’t deal with the biggest problem in metrics, the problem of characterizing the measure. To do good metrics, you have to be very clear on what you are measuring, the characterization problem. Without that, all the formulas, graphs, and trends are pretty much useless. Most of the book dealt with the problem by saying, “If you could measure `X’, then…” I got really tired of all the Ifs in the book.
In fact, I am not sure I should like this book or not. I found myself half of the time saying to myself, “Hmm, that is a interesting idea,” and the other half saying, “I don’t think so.” Perhaps it was all the Ifs, perhaps it was the repetition. I am glad to say at the end of the book Anderson does appear to have the intelligence to note that one size does not fit all and does a nice job of suggesting where the best choices in software development approaches might be.
So, who should read this book? Well, if you like Donald Reinertsen’s and Eliyahu Goldratt’s work and live in the software world, this book is for you. If you have to teach Agile seminars to software professionals (like me), then this should be on your reading list as well. If you are general software project manager or developer who is looking to improve the way you do software development, then I would probably pass on this book. Not that the ideas are all wrong but you probably will get lost along the way. If…