Rating: 
Summary: A useless book if you have common sense & know modeling.
Review: If you have never done OO modeling, then this book doesn't have enough detail on modeling to be your only source of instruction. And if you do know modeling, then you only need common sense to know you that you need to avoid getting stuck with "analysis paralysis". I think this book should have been just a magazine article. Hats off to Mr. Ambler for being able to generate so many words with so little to say.
Rating: 
Summary: Seeing the forest through the trees
Review: In this book, Scott Ambler provides a practical approach to modeling that allows you to successfully deploy best practices on your agile software development project. From use case modeling to deployment diagrams, agile modeling defines these best practices for rapidly moving from requirements to code in a single, easy to read book. Additionally, Scott presents many of the nuances of software modeling that cannot be found in any other book.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Agile Modeling is that it is not only a book about a great software development methodology; it also suggests cultural changes to the way that we view modeling. These changes blur the line between traditional approaches such as those espoused by the Unified Process and the new culture espoused by XP. These ideas are very much in line with the way that software is successfully produced.
This book is not an entry-level UML book. If you are looking for basic UML, look at some of the entry level UML books. Instead, this book geared toward those who are actively producing customer grade software applications. It hits the mark squarely for those who want to be more successful in this endeavor.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Information
Review: My first impression on receiving "Agile Modeling" was that there is lots of information which could be condensed into tighter passages or sometimes omitted.I have read Scott Ambler's work before and am an admirer of his contribution to software development. I found the book helpful, as with most of Scott's work, despite the sometimes redundant information. Despite my cautionary introduction above, I recommend this book to developers and project managers. In this book the reader can expect to find information on how to implement development processes with Agile Modeling (AM).
This book discusses the processes for development - it does not go into the details on how to use the tools. There is a comparison chapter on AM and XP which is helpful. AM, like all development processes, is a mixture of art and science. It is not carved in stone - although many may disagree with this statement. This book will help the reader decide what is appropriate to utilize for the project, given the real-world scenarios. Hope this helps - please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Information
Review: My first impression on receiving "Agile Modeling" was that there is lots of information which could be condensed into tighter passages or sometimes omitted. I have read Scott Ambler's work before and am an admirer of his contribution to software development. I found the book helpful, as with most of Scott's work, despite the sometimes redundant information. Despite my cautionary introduction above, I recommend this book to developers and project managers. In this book the reader can expect to find information on how to implement development processes with Agile Modeling (AM).
This book discusses the processes for development - it does not go into the details on how to use the tools. There is a comparison chapter on AM and XP which is helpful. AM, like all development processes, is a mixture of art and science. It is not carved in stone - although many may disagree with this statement. This book will help the reader decide what is appropriate to utilize for the project, given the real-world scenarios. Hope this helps - please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Rating: 
Summary: Violating its own principles
Review: One of the values of the agile movement is simplicity, which the author kindly spends about two pages explaining it to us mere mortals. And it seems only logical that this high principle would also imply brevity. Unfortunately, this book in itself is a violation of that principle. The only useful lesson that one can possibly distill from this three hundred and fifty pages tome is the following: Keep it simple, lose it if you don't use it, and don't hesitate to ditch your expensive modeling software when it becomes too restrictive. A wonderful and very effective advice if I may add, but there is definitely no need for an entire book to explain it. This book is neither a modeling tutorial nor an introduction. And if you have had any decent amount of practical modeling experience then chances are you have already learned the above lesson. As such, the book fails to hit the mark for both experts and novice modelers. Nevertheless, the lesson it contains is important, thus the two stars. The book itself, however, receives a flat zero rating.
Rating:
Summary: "Modern" software development explained
Review: The best book on software development that I have read to date. It just makes so much sense! Keep an open mind and read it, I can't recommend this book enough.
Rating:
Summary: Ambler's most valuable book to date
Review: The hype that grew around eXtreme Programming (XP) in the year 2001, and the publication of now almost 2 dozen books devoted to XP has not cleared up the original vagueness of what practices are allowed and what aren't. To a casual observer the XP culture seems replete with "Thou shalt not's"¯ don't do Big Requirements Up Front, don't do Big Design Up Front, don't build models because it's only the code that matters, etc. For those of us who think it's important to have a map of where you are going before you start a long trip, some of the radicalness of XP was¯well, too radical and too unplanned. Scott Ambler's new book, Agile Modeling, addresses a sane middle ground between the apparent unstructured XP and the overly structured approach in the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Agile Modeling is arguably Ambler's best book to date. It conveys an approach that is truly a confluence of best practices and does so in a very readable, accessible presentation. Ambler presents Agile Modeling (AM) as a set of values, principles and practices. AM's values are borrowed directly from those in XP: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback and Courage, with Ambler's addition of "humility". In my experience this additional value is a defining characteristic of an effective modeler and mentor. From these 5 values Ambler defines the principles for AM, including: Software is your Primary Goal, Travel Light, Embrace Change, use Multiple Models, etc.
It is interesting to me that no one would refute these principles: they are too close to Motherhood and Apple pie. But it is disturbing how seldom I see any of these principles actually embraced by the dozen or more organizations I provide mentoring services to each year. The bare-metal practicality of AM is in the chapters on "Agile Modeling in Practice". Here Ambler goes into detail on the practices that support the AM principles. Are you curious how your culture might adopt AM? See his chapter on "Nurturing an Agile Culture". In a quandary over what expensive OO CASE tool to buy? See "Using the Simplest Tools Possible?" In his broad reach in this book Ambler covers issues surrounding how you can effectively set up your work areas, how to conduct modeling sessions, how to staff your AM teams, and more. And each chapter ends with a pragmatic commentary on "How to Make This Work in the Real World". I predict that if one chapter is read more than any other it will be the one on "Agile Documentation". This is also the longest chapter in the book, and Ambler skillfully addresses the two big questions of "Why Do People Document?" and "When Does a Model Become Permanent?" And if for some perverse reason you didn't read any chapter but this one, it alone would justify the cost of the book. The last two sections of the book show how to apply these principles and practices to an XP environment (Part 3), and then how they can be applied to a Unified Process environment (Part 4). Again the approach is on the practical application of AM so that you can have a better chance of succeeding on your next (or current) software project. If you are a software developer, a technical manager or project manager, you cannot afford to dismiss this book. Forty years ago no one did the "waterfall" process (Winston Royce hadn't defined it yet) and forty years from now we will certainly be building software in ways we have not yet even conceived. But this year and for the foreseeable future we will be using every idea from Agile Modeling to build better software faster. As Ambler says about building an agile culture, "You can be agile or you can be fragile." That says it all, so get this book and learn how AM can make you a winner.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: The name of the book is misleading. Scott's ideas are targeted not only at agile processes but cover the whole spectrum from agile to heavyweight/prescriptive, gearing them all toward agile. I was exposed to a few model types I didn't know and didn't care to learn because my fancy tools didn't support them. Agile Modeling - low-tech alternatives in particular - gives me tremendous freedom for my modeling efforts from now on. Scott's pragmatic and comprehensive style is wordy but leaves no space for BS. Expect people defending their niche in heavy document-centric processes to be very upset by this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a particularly "agile" book!
Review: There's a lot of good information in this book, although some of the advice is out of date in light of the OMGs Model Driven Architecture and the latest crop of highly productive UML CASE tools. It seems as though this books has been written by someone who is a programmer, rather than a modeler or business analyst and the importance of models as long-term repositories of valuable business semantics seems to have been overlooked. The emphasis throughout is on the model as precursor to code - this is OK, but it misses a lot of the true value of UML models.
The book itself could benefit from the application of some of the "agile" principles. The author gives us a summary of the main points at the beginning of each chapter (good) and then goes on to discuss said points (good) but this discussion is often longer than the point really warrants. Many of the points are very obvious, and have been stated elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Don¿t waste your money.
Review: This book is a little bit of common sense wrapped up in a lot of pseudo-religious psychobabble. Agile modeling is a technique that can be summed up in one sentence. "Use UML wisely". This book attempts to wrap that simple concept up in 25-dollar words and intellectual grandeur. Ambler preaches the value of simplicity for good communications, but has done a poor job of following his own advice; instead he delivers a healthy dose of verbal diarrhea and baffling language. Tragically, the editor could have really helped, but chose not to. Amblers appalling practice of putting initials and references in brackets every second sentence should have been stopped after the first page. As for the layout, the editor desperately needs to read a book on the correct use of white space because those long blocks of dreary text are just draining to try and read. Mr. Ambler, I respect your ideas and applaud you standing up to the nonsense of overblown UML diagrams that communicate nothing. Unfortunately you need to rethink you approach, because this book is a classic example of the things you're arguing against.
| 
