Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

1.1. Why Read this Book?

Even if you don't wish to embrace Agile software development, there are good reasons to embrace learning and create a learning culture. Building a learning environment and culture can help improve the way in which you create software and benefit your company in many ways.

This book is primarily written for software developers and managers who want to improve the way in which they, and their teams, develop software. Software developers who are making, or have recently made, the transition to team leadership and development management should find the ideas particularly interesting.

There's an additional group of people who I hope will find this book inrerestin: those dependent on the work of a software development them. Such people often view IT, and specifically development activities, as a foreign land. Viewing IT as a learning activity, rather than an engineering or scientific activity, can help explain much of what goes on in that land.

1.1.1. Learning for Agility

The book aims to help in three ways:

• For teams that want to be Agile: Increasingly, we know what Agile software development is. The problem facing those who aren't Agile is not 'What is Agile?' or 'What do Agile teams do differently?' The problem is rather 'How do we change so that we're Agile?' This book presents learning as a mechanism for creating change.

• For teams that are Agile and want to improve further: For teams that have achieved Agility, the challenge is slightly different. Such ...