Book Review - The Agile Samurai

The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software

by Jonathan Rasmusson

The Agile Samurai provides a master class in how to get an Agile project up and running with the minimum of fuss. Written in plain English with an engaging and humorous tone, I was surprised just how quickly I reached the back cover. The author skilfully serves up bite-sized nuggets of Agile interspersed with fun imagery and amusing ‘real-life’ anecdotes, steering well clear of the jargon-laden word-heavy tome this topic could easily sustain. Plenty of references are provided throughout the text for those who wish to dig deeper into the various sub-topics.

Starting with a gentle intro to Agile, covering it’s basic tenets and outlining Agile team roles, the author’s swift progression to project inception provides some useful team building elements but more importantly, in my view, raises some important though easily neglected points to consider before even getting your project started.

I personally found the section on project planning most useful - specifically, how and when best to gather user requirements (stories) and how to organise and use them to plan iterations and measure productivity. The chapter on unit testing, refactoring and test-driven development, though brief, is also full of excellent advice and examples.

Although primarily aimed at full development teams, if you’re a developer working mostly alone this book is still for you.

Reviewed by Kim Rowan