Ambler Scott W. - Disciplined agile delivery: a practitioners guide to agile software delivery in the enterprise

A Practitioners Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise

Scott Ambler and Mark Lines

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ISBN-13: 978-0-13-281013-5
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Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at R.R. Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing June 2012

Finally, a practical down-to-earth guide that is true to agile values and principles while at the same time acknowledging the realities of the business and the bigger picture. You will find no purist dogma here, nor any hype or hyperbole. Ambler and Lines show how to navigate the varied contexts and constraints of both team-level and enterprise-level needs to hit the agile sweet spot for your team and attain the real benefits of sustainable agility. I wish Id had this book ten years ago!

Brad Appleton, agile/lean development champion for a large fortune 150 telecommunications company

We have found the guidance from Disciplined Agile Delivery to be a great help in customizing our PMO governance for agile projects at CP Rail. The book will definitely be on the must-read list for teams using agile delivery.

Larry Shumlich, project manager coach, Canadian Pacific Railway

This book is destined to become the de facto standard reference guide for any organization trying to apply agile/scrum in a complex environment. Scott and Mark provide practical guidance and experiences from successful agile teams on what it takes to bring an end-to-end agile delivery lifecycle to the enterprise.

Elizabeth Woodward, IBM agile community leader, coauthor of A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum

There are many ways to achieve the benefits of agility, so its really encouraging to see a pragmatic and usable umbrella description that encapsulates most of these without becoming a diluted kind of best of compilation, or a one-size-fits-all. Great reading for anyone orientating themselves in an ever-growing and complex field.

Nick Clare, agile coach/principal consultant, Ivar Jacobson International

Scott and Mark have compiled an objective treatment of a tough topic. Loaded with insights from successful application under game conditions, this book strikes a good balance between progressive agilists looking to accelerate change and conservative organizational managers looking for scalable solutions.

Walker Royce, chief software economist, IBM

Disciplined Agile Delivery, a hybrid and experience-based approach to software delivery, reflects the growing trend toward pragmatism and away from the anti-syncretism that has plagued the software development industry for over 40 years. I commend Scott and Mark for writing this book and showing the leadership necessary to take our profession to the next level.

Mark Kennaley, CTO, Software-Development-Experts.com; author of SDLC 3.0: Beyond a Tacit Understanding of Agile

Ive seen certified agile run rampant in an organization and create more severe problems than it solved. Finally, we have a definitive source on how to apply agile pragmatically with discipline to deliver success. Thanks, Scott and Mark.

Carson Holmes, EVP, service delivery, Fourth Medium Consulting, Inc.

For Olivia, who will always be my little pumpkin.Scott

To my beautiful family, Louise, Brian, and Katherine,
for your love and support. I am truly blessed...Mark

The process wars are over, and agile has won. While working at Forrester, we observed that agile methods had gone mainstream, with the majority of organizations saying that they were using agile on at least 38% of their projects. But the reality of agile usage, as Scott and Mark point out, is far from the original ideas described by the 17 thought leaders in 2001. Instead, agile is undermined by organizational inertia, politics, peoples skills, management practices, vendors, and outsourced development. I observed that the reality of agile was something more akin to