Today, I looked over the list of top 100 best software engineering books
I don’t want to start a discussion about the books I feel are missing or about the validity of the method used to select the best books (in fact, the first thing I would change is the title of the list, instead of “best books” I would say “most popular”, that seems more appropriate).
I’m just surprised to see how many of the books contain the word Agile in the title (10 out of 100). Instead, only four included the word UML (although many more use it) and none mentions (again, just considering the title) MDD,MDA,code-generation or similar. Keep this in mind if you plan to start writing a new book!
In my humble opinion, there is too much hype over this Agile thing. In the same way we complain that the benefits of modeling I’d like to see some studies on the benefits of Agile processes. The Software Engineering Evidence database seems to contain a fair number of empirical studies on the topic so I guess I should start by reading them (suggestions welcome) and see if they convince me.
FNR Pearl Chair. Head of the Software Engineering RDI Unit at LIST. Affiliate Professor at University of Luxembourg. More about me.
…considering the method by which the list was compiled. Though I have to say, I’ve enjoyed many OF the books IN the list AND I’m glad they’re there.
This “Agile thing” IS popular because many companies ARE successfully doing it. MDD AND MDA aren’t popular because it’s mostly just academics telling practitioners they’re great things to do, without any credible argument or evidence.
For a couple of good studies on how agile works in practice you can check out Sharp’s 2004 “Extreme Programming in Practice” AND Teasley’s 2002 “Radical Team Collocation” papers.
~Jorge