A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming

Rating:
Summary: Good coverage of XP project cycle
Review: A Practical Guide is at its best when bringing together different strands of thought from the XP community: referencing discussions from the WikiWikiWeb, bringing in the red-yellow-green metaphor for test-first programming, using concrete examples like those in Martin Fowler's book to illustrate refactoring. Another key contribution are the concrete examples from experience, of user stories and acceptance tests, conceptualization activities that are typically the hardest to nail down when first considering XP. Sidebars that draw connections between XP and tools like Ant and CruiseControl are useful as a starting point for figuring out how to support a real project.

Having the whole XP project cycle lined up in one book, extended with meatier, more detailed material (like the unit testing and refactoring discussions), should help the reader get a handle on the whole process and get a feel for what the day-to-day work will be like. It's certainly more digestible than tracking down dozens of XP papers and articles online, so it should be handy for people looking to quickly get up to speed on what XP currently looks like.

Rating:
Summary: XP - Explained Succintly and Iteratively!
Review: Although I have been a follower of XP and have read David Astels works before, I was initially apprehensive on reading another book on XP programming.

One of the goals of XP is to be succinct and iterative - ironically I had difficulty finding XP books that had followed the goals of XP. My assumption is that many of the books have been rushed to publication.

"Practical Guide to XP" has many more plusses than minuses. There are actual hands-on examples, with code. About a quarter of the book is devoted to test and source code from an XP project. I am normally not a big fan of having complete source code from a project in a book - aside from making the book heavier it generally serves little purpose. In this particular case, it makes sense as the processes of XP can be "followed through". XP is a development process/philosophy - as such it is better for newcomers to follow an actual implementation to fully appreciate the concepts.

This book will help somewhat to clear the fog on the many views on XP. XP, like all development methodologies, is a combination of art and science. There will be many views on methods of practicing XP and each project will be unique. This book will help you decide what you need to use for your particular project.

Hope this helps - please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Rating:
Summary: Good Content. Extremely poorly written
Review: I found this book to be a good introduction to XP. I feel like I have a solid foundation from which to learn more about this software development approach. It has many good examples and metaphors which help to bring the approach into reality.

HOWEVER...this is one of the most poorly written books I have read in a long time. The errata on this thing would be almost as long as the book itself. It seems as though they took the spell-checkers word that it was correct with no real proof-reading. For example, they mixed the words "emersion" and "immersion", "complimentary" and "complementary" and others like this. I have never seen so many run-on sentences in a published book. These sentences are copied word for word out of the book. I'm not making this up. "The release will work, that is, it will pass acceptance tests set forth by the customer during conceptualization." Here's an example of a sentence that passed the spell-checker, but makes no sense. "However, it you know it's a trap, and because..."

In conclusion, I wouldn't buy this book until it's in 2nd edition. The publisher has some work to do on this to clean it up and make it worth $29.99.

Rating:
Summary: Great if you need to know *how* to do XP
Review: I read this book before I read Extreme Programming explained by Kent Beck and found it very helpful, with plenty of resources.
Anyway I recommend reading other books that deal with the theory of XP or you might not get the whole picture.

If you already know XP, but don't know how to start then this is the book for you. It will guide you through a real world example making clear what a story card, team velocity, etc. are.
Needs some more work to make it VERY clear and FULLY understandable.

Rating:
Summary: The definite "Gospel Book" to preach XP in your company
Review: Initiate a paradigm shift in an organisation is hard, as anyone who had tried can tell you. People need to be convinced beyond doubt that the shift is beneficial and can actually be implemented. And, more importantly, that they need assurance that YOU, NOT THEM, are the one who is going to implement the change!!

Being a recent convert to the XP (Extreme Programming) camp, I am anxious to spread the "gospel". Being no born evangelist, I start looking for the one book that I can use to communicate XP clearly to convince both the management ("Look, it saves money and make customers happy!... No, they didn't pay me, really!") and programmers in the team ("Yo, this thing rocks!") so that they are willing to embrace the change , and at the same time, with enough practical advices and detail examples to the software architect (that's me) who need to know *how* XP can be implemented across the team.

"A Practical guide to eXtreme programming" is the book I found. And I wholeheartedly recommend it, here is why:

* The size of a "In a Nutshell" book, you can bring it along and read when you commute
* No fluff, jam pack with advices and examples, and the authors are courageous enough to include an appendix section showing a substantial example (1/3 of the whole book!!) of an XP project with the source code that clearly demonstrate the "Write Test First" and other programming principles advocate by XP. The perfect answer to the show-me-the-code programmers. Impressive!
* Do not try to sell you their proprietary CASE tools (Can you say "ROSE"?)
* Have pictures showing real programmers practicing XP (How many time have you seen programmers photo in a book?) This may sound trivial but that really make the readers feel XP is for real.

Now, this book surely make me feel confident and bold. So if you will excuse me, there are souls to be saved.

Rating:
Summary: The definite "Gospel Book" to preach XP in your company
Review: Initiate a paradigm shift in an organisation is hard, as anyone who had tried can tell you. People need to be convinced beyond doubt that the shift is beneficial and can actually be implemented. And, more importantly, that they need assurance that YOU, NOT THEM, are the one who is going to implement the change!!

Being a recent convert to the XP (Extreme Programming) camp, I am anxious to spread the "gospel". Being no born evangelist, I start looking for the one book that I can use to communicate XP clearly to convince both the management ("Look, it saves money and make customers happy!... No, they didn't pay me, really!") and programmers in the team ("Yo, this thing rocks!") so that they are willing to embrace the change , and at the same time, with enough practical advices and detail examples to the software architect (that's me) who need to know *how* XP can be implemented across the team.

"A Practical guide to eXtreme programming" is the book I found. And I wholeheartedly recommend it, here is why:

* The size of a "In a Nutshell" book, you can bring it along and read when you commute
* No fluff, jam pack with advices and examples, and the authors are courageous enough to include an appendix section showing a substantial example (1/3 of the whole book!!) of an XP project with the source code that clearly demonstrate the "Write Test First" and other programming principles advocate by XP. The perfect answer to the show-me-the-code programmers. Impressive!
* Do not try to sell you their proprietary CASE tools (Can you say "ROSE"?)
* Have pictures showing real programmers practicing XP (How many time have you seen programmers photo in a book?) This may sound trivial but that really make the readers feel XP is for real.

Now, this book surely make me feel confident and bold. So if you will excuse me, there are souls to be saved.

Rating:
Summary: Exactly What The Title Says It Is
Review: No muss, no fuss; just a straightforward exposition of what XP is, and what it is not. If you are wondering what all the fuss over XP is all about, this book won't disappoint you. XP is commonly characterized as "Forget planning, just code!" This book clarifies that misconception, and others. It is really directoed at answering the question "How come XP projects don't collapse in chaos?" After reading this book, XP didn't sound nearly as crazy as it does on the newsgroups.

Rating:
Summary: Real world advice
Review: The XP book market is getting increasingly crowded; this book differs from the pack as it walks through examples in an easy to grasp format. The book is geared towards Java developers; this is not a problem per se but non-Java developers should be aware of this. My copy of this book is beaten and worn!

I think this is one of the only XP books that links back into Agile Modelling. This is very helpful as XP readers sometimes get the impression that XP throws the baby out with the bathwater; design is still important!

Another aspect I liked was the inclusion of quite few photographs; this helps bridge the gap between the words and understanding. If you're seriously interested in using XP you should get this book.

Where was this book 2 years ago!