Customer Rating:  
Summary: Great first book to read for managers...but you need another after choosing your method
Comment: In my experience there is always something about a particular agile method that you don't like. This book provides a brilliant examination and comparison of the methods that let you make pragmatic choices around how to combine methods into your overall agile approach.
I also like that it has tons of references that provide evidence for why agile is better than waterfall. There are many things in this book that help you sell agile to your management team without it coming across as biased; its just the obvious choice.
NOTE: This book should be one of the first you read, and will not be the last you read since it doesn't have enough detail about the individual methods but it is an amazing book to allow you to navigate and not get caught up in a particular philosophy or method.
SUMMARY: If you want to explore agile buy this book first.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent survey of iterative and incremental development (IID) methodologies
Comment: This work by Larman shares some commonalities with Balancing Agility and Discipline, a work by Boehm and Turner (see my review for that book) in which a wide range of methodologies are compared side-by-side to determine the best fit for teams. However, rather than serving as a guide to determine best fit from a wide assortment of methodologies, Larman's work is limited to a discussion of Scrum, XP, Unified Process (i.e. RUP/UP), and Evo, within the broader context of what the author categories as iterative and incremental development (IID). In my opinion, this book is probably the best organized text on this subject currently available in the marketplace. Although the subtitle for this work categorizes itself as a manager's guide, the content Larman has included here will prove beneficial for anyone involved in software development. And this is the case even if one does not read the four methodology-specific chapters. After a thorough explanation of iterative and evolutionary development, the author discusses its relationship to agile development and the motivation behind adopting such methodologies. The subsequent chapter on the evidence behind the effectiveness of IID is the most concise listing of research findings I have come across. While this chapter begins with a warning that "exhaustive data can make for exhaustive reading" and that it is "probably best spot-read as a reference", at only about 30 pages in length it is well recommended. While many in technology recognize the benefits of IID and have used the ideas brought to the table by various IID methodologies to some extent, the author reminds the reader that not only do many technology shops simply remain paralyzed by waterfall methods that view software as a predictive process, but that IID has been around for decades. David L. Parnas, a software engineering pioneer who developed the concept of module design, is quoted by Larman as follows. "Q: What are the most exciting, promising software engineering ideas or techniques on the horizon? A: I don't think that the most promising ideas are on the horizon. They are already here and have been for years, but are not being used properly." I found the following sections within the specific methodology discussions to be especially beneficial: common mistakes and misunderstandings (or how to fail with a particular methodology), signs that one has not understood a particular methodology, sample projects, process mixtures, and adoption strategies. In addition, the reader might be interested in knowing that the last chapter consists solely of questions and answers summarizing many of the main discussions presented elsewhere in the preceding eleven chapters, serving as a quick reference by pointing to specific portions of the text where ideas are elaborated upon.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great comprehensive guide
Comment: Unlike many of the books out there, this book covers iterative development techniques in general. The book is well organized and structured and gives a good framework for thinking about different ways to manage a project and develop software. Agile, Scrum, Extreme Programming, Unified Process and Evo are all covered and compared which is invaluable in deciding which one to use or, more likely, which elements can be used for your projects.
Finally, some practice tips and a FAQ are provided to help you succeed in applying these methods to your project as well as answering the questions your team may come up with.
I found this book easy to read and understand and now feel well equipped to apply these techniques.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Informative but boring
Comment: This book tries to provide an overview of several different "non-Waterfall" techniques for managing and organizing projects. The authors are pretty scrupulous about not really advocating one method over another, and as such, I did not find it particularly helpful for my own situation with my software team. Reading about Evo, XP, Scrum, RUP etc. all in one place with key characteristics and comparing their "levels of ceremony" might be interesting to project management/methodology researchers, but there aren't very many professionals out there who are sold on iterative development but are wondering which one they should use.
The book also is fairly technical, with lots of grids and charts trying to explain which levels of critical projects should be considered for a methodology, how levels of effort of different tasks change over time, who the stakeholders are and what to label them, and so forth. I got practically zero out of this.
On the positive side, now that I've read it I am armed to discuss the different methodologies much more, in case a new person arrives advocating a methodology I disagree with or something. I can use this overview knowledge to also pick and choose some terms or approaches which might be helpful in my situation at work. The part of the book which was most interesting was a chapter in which a typical Scrum project was described in narrative form. I think more of that, such as perhaps a narrative illustrating each methodology, would have been more helpful to those trying to decide which methodology to follow in future work.
For the audience of PMs who don't want to know the ins and outs of every IID methodology since the 70's, though, and just want to know how to run their projects better, I don't think this book will fill their need. Or if it does, it will be from the readers picking and choosing little bits across the book--something the authors recommend against.
Customer Rating:
Summary: good graphics but too much on waterfall
Comment: What caught my eye on seeing this on the bookshelf were the color of typography, the small notes near the edges of the page that summarized a paragraph, the good graphics and diagrams. It looked like a quality book. After seeing how long was the discussion on "proving" that waterfall methodology was too long, "heavy", slow, and projects that used it more prone to less-than-satisfying end results, I understood why this book is titled for managers. In fact, one of the sentences it mentions that the step-follow-step process of the waterfall was popularized in the 70's and 80's, age during which today's managers got their education. On the CMM of SEI, a brief mention on it was that it resembles the heavyness of waterfall. Wished I had a bit more on it, but did learn from it anyway. The very last paragraph of the book had information I wanted: it was about Fitnesse, but it was just too little.
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