Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed - Softcover

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Barry Boehm has been trying to balance agility and discipline in software development since 1955. The TRW professor of software engineering and director of the USC Center for Software Engineering, he earlier served as director of the DARPA Information Science and Technology Office and as a chief scientist at TRW. Dr. Boehm's contributions to the field include the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the Spiral Model of the software process, the Theory W (win-win) approach to software management and requirements determination, and his classic book, Software Engineering Economics (Prentice Hall, 1981). Richard Turner, a research professor in engineering management and systems engineering at the George Washington University, approaches balanced software development and acquisition with broad industry and government experience and a skeptical attitude toward best practices. In support of the U.S. Department of Defense, he is responsible for identifying and transitioning new software technology into the development and acquisition of complex, software-intensive defense systems. Dr. Turner was on the original author team for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and is coauthor off CMMI Distilled, Second Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2004).

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"Being a certified bibliophile and a professional geek, I have more shelf space devoted to books on software methods than any reasonable human should possess.Balancing Agility and Discipline has a prominent place in that section of my library, because it has helped me sort through the noise and smoke of the current method wars."

--From the Foreword by Grady Booch

"This is an outstanding book on an emotionally complicated topic. I applaud the authors for the care with which they have handled the subject."

--From the Foreword by Alistair Cockburn

"The authors have done a commendable job of identifying five critical factors--personnel, criticality, size, culture, and dynamism--for creating the right balance of flexibility and structure. Their thoughtful analysis will help developers who must sort through the agile-disciplined debate, giving them guidance to create the right mix for their projects."

--From the Foreword by Arthur Pyster

Agility and discipline: These apparently opposite attributes are, in fact, complementary values in software development. Plan-driven developers must also be agile; nimble developers must also be disciplined. The key to success is finding the right balance between the two, which will vary from project to project according to the circumstances and risks involved. Developers, pulled toward opposite ends by impassioned arguments, ultimately must learn how to give each value its due in their particular situations.

Balancing Agility and Discipline sweeps aside the rhetoric, drills down to the operational core concepts, and presents a constructive approach to defining a balanced software development strategy. The authors expose the bureaucracy and stagnation that mark discipline without agility, and liken agility without discipline to unbridled and fruitless enthusiasm. Using a day in the life of two development teams and ground-breaking case studies, they illustrate the differences and similarities between agile and plan-driven methods, and show that the best development strategies have ways to combine both attributes. Their analysis is both objective and grounded, leading finally to clear and practical guidance for all software professionals--showing how to locate the sweet spot on the agility-discipline continuum for any given project.