CategoryBook

Target audience: TTD beginners and practisioners Urs’ comment: Simply THE book you have to read when starting with Test-Driven Development. The book provides an introduction to the red-green-refactor cycle with a lot of examples.  If there is a down side to this book then it is that is just covers the basics. A must read for every developer starting with TDD. Daniel’s comment: I couldn’t agree more with what Urs already emphasized about this book. I suggest you read this book...

Target audience: Product Owners, future Product Owners, Scrum Coaches Urs’ comment: This thin book (119 pages) is full of information, tips and tricks for Product Owners. The compressed style is ideal because no Product Owner can say that there is not enough time to read it! Nonethless, the book gives a detailed look into the job of a real Product Owner seeking a product that matches the customers and end users needs. From the envisioning of the product via grooming the product backlog...

Target audience: everyone working with any agile methodology: Scrum, XP, Kanban, … Urs’ comment: If you want to get the most out of your requirements in your agile project then this book is for you. Mike Cohn shows User Stories  as the building blocks of agile requirments engineering. The book covers how to use User Stories, their advantages, their limitations and a lot of  real-world project know-how around User Stories. If you work with User Stories then you should have read this...

Target audience: Agile coaches, Scrum Masters
Urs’ Comment: A must read for agile coaches. A lot of high quality information about how to use Scrum and how to introduce Scrum in an organization. This book is not for beginners, if you’ve got the idea behind Scrum and have worked with it for some time then this book is for you and will help you to make the next steps in getting even more out of Scrum.
ISBN: 978-0-321-57936-2

Target audience: Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters
Urs’ comment: Contains a lot of useful technics and ideas how to hold retrospectives for sprints, releases and projects. A good read for Scrum Masters and agile Coaches. However, the reading is rather boring.
ISBN: 0-9776166-4-9

Target audience: Software developers, software architects Urs’ comment: A must read for software developers and architects (in .NET). This books provides a lot of best practices, patterns and principles (e.g. SOLID). To be honest, I skipped the UML chapter and I only read across the introduction to the principles of XP (there are better books for this). But the book shines on topics such as principles of OO design and packaging and my favourite part is the design smell chapter...

Target audience: ScrumMasters, agile Coaches Urs’s comment: There are two sides to this book. On one hand, the book is full of very good advice, well explained and covered with real world scenarios and examples. And this is the reason why I have to recommend this book for anyone who wants to coach agile development. Beside descriptions on how to run an agile process (planning, daily stand-up and so on), the book explains how to improve team work and how to drive change. On the other hand...

Target audience: Speakers Urs’ Kommentar: Auch für PowerPoint Benutzer sehr informativ. Kurz und prägnant – halt wie eine gute Präsentation. Tipps eignen sich vorallem für Verkaufsgespräche, weniger für Konferenzpräsentationen. Matthias Pöhm hat eher eine radikale Haltung, darum enthält das Buch aber auch einiges an Neuigkeiten. Es hat sich definitiv gelohnt dieses Buch zu lesen. Dani’s Kommentar: Pöhm’s Buch ist eine sehr gute Ergänzung zum Presentation Zen Buch. Pöhm...

Target audience: Software Developers Urs’s comment: 210 pages of pure Uncle Bob power about what makes a real professional. While I do not agree with everything written in this book, every software developer should reflect about the topics discussed in this book: when to say “no” to a task, how to say “yes” and do what you promised, practices of a professional and much more. I like this book much more than “Clean Code” because this time there is a clear...

Target audience: Software Developers Urs’ comment: A book covering a very important topic: how to write code that won’t suck tomorrow. Therefore, I recommend reading this book. However, the book itself would have needed some additional “refactoring”. There are contradictions (probably due to different oppinions of the several authors) and a lot of repetition (especially in the chapter summing up the clean code rules). After all, it was worth reading and inspiring. ISBN:...