Results of Survey Agile and Open Source Literature
The survey results are in. Thanks to all 106 participants who contributed!
A bit of background. Let me first say that the survey obviously was not comprehensive. There were a lot of good books that we missed. However, it was not the purpose to judge book authors but rather I wanted to feel confident in recommending books to my students from a practitioner’s perspective. Hence my request for the “collective intelligence” by sending out a survey even if I missed some good books (like Alistair Cockburn’s original work the Crystal methods). If we had listed all books possible folks would not have finished the survey by now.
We have appended the top 5 books in the categories most well-known and most-liked for both process as well as design-and-programming books plus a German category. The best-liked books have the percentage appended, indicating how many folks of those who read the book actually liked it. In the top 5 process book list, #5 is relatively unknown but got high approval ratings by those who knew it. I will use this list as the base for my recommendations to students. The open source literature, unfortunately, is still too thin to have returned meaningful results from this survey. (Or we used the wrong channels when asking for input.)
Top 5 Best-Liked Process Books
1. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition) by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres (79%)
2. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks (79%)
3. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (73%)
4. Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising (73%)
5. The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden (72%)
Top 5 Most Well-Known Process Books
1. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition) by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres
2. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks
3. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
4. Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler
5. Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck
Top 5 Best-Liked Design and Programming Books
1. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, and William Opdyke (85%)
2. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric J. Evans (77%)
3. Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers (74%)
4. Design Patterns. Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph E. Johnson, and John Vlissides (71%)
5. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler (61%)
Top 5 Most Well-Known Design and Programming Books
1. Design Patterns. Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph E. Johnson, and John Vlissides
2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, and William Opdyke
3. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
4. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric J. Evans
5. Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Best-Liked German Books
1. Testgetriebene Entwicklung mit JUnit & FIT: Wie Software änderbar bleibt von Frank Westphal (79%)
2. Scrum – Agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen von Roman Pichler (60%)
3. Agile Softwareentwicklung im Großen: Ein Eintauchen in die Untiefen erfolgreicher Projekte von Jutta Eckstein und Nicolai Josuttis (56%)
Most Well-Known German Books
1. Entwurfsmuster: Elemente wiederverwendbarer objektorientierter Software von Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, und John Vlissides
2. Agile Softwareentwicklung im Großen: Ein Eintauchen in die Untiefen erfolgreicher Projekte von Jutta Eckstein und Nicolai Josuttis
3. eXtreme Programming: Eine Einführung mit Empfehlungen und Erfahrungen aus der Praxis von Henning Wolf, Stefan Roock, und Martin Lippert
Credits
Credits go to (sorted by first name alphabetical order): Alex Chastinet, Allen Holub, Andreas Birk, Andreas Schreiber, Bernd Oestereich, Bernd Schiffer, Colin Jack, Dave Kellogg, Don Winiecki, Felix Kerger, Gero Wedemann, Greg Cohen, Guilherme Chapiewski, Hugo Corbucci, Ilja Preuß, Jeff Miller, Jens Coldewey, Jens Uwe Pipka, Joerg Pechau, Johannes Link, John E. Boal, Jonathan Harley, Julio Santos, Markus Gaelli, Matt Hargett, Mike Tian-Jian Jiang, Silke Geisen, Stefan Erras, Stefan Schmiedl, Werner Wild.