Tim Ottinger & Jeff Langr present the blog behind the versatile
Pragmatic Programmers reference cards.
Promo Video Contest
We're offering as a prize a ten-pack of cards ($110 at PragProg) for the video we choose as the best. In return, you'd grant us rights and permissions to use the video and whoevers' likenesses for promotional use.
Please email me (jeff at langrsoft.com) if you have any further questions about the contest.
Contest deadline: February 28, 2011
Legal stuff: This is all arbitrary, and Tim and I reserve all rights, including the right to not choose a video if none suits our promotional needs.
The Deal
Agile In A Flash is not a replacement for coaching, training, consulting, and those wonderful books that my colleagues have written. Agile in a Flash is a great way to get started, and a great tool for coaches, trainers, and consultants to use in teaching Agile software development to their clients and colleagues.
This is our first released video about the cards. Stay tuned.
Released.
To our knowledge there is not another product like this one anywhere in the world, on any topic. We've worked hard to make something useful and unique for our Agile community. We have spent a lot of time on format and form factor, phrasing, clarifying points when possible, and weeding out the cards that seemed less useful. As a result of our extreme culling and revisits, you will find powerful advice in a surprisingly small package.
Pragmatic Programmers helped us to make it affordable for teams and companies alike, and individual copies are not out of "impulse purchase" range. This was a departure from their normal publishing activities, but they believed in it and did a lot of legwork to make it possible. They've been supportive and amazing, and I hope you will reward them with your custom.
Thank you for your comments, reviews, tweets and retweets. Today the project is entirely "real" and we appreciate all our readers have done (and may continue to do) to make this crazy little idea work.
New PragProg article: Code Coupling
In addition to the HTML version, you also find PDF, epub, and mobi versions of the article here.
Agile in a Flash is slated for publication on January 20! You can advance-order now from Amazon; you'll also soon be able to order in bulk, at a discount, from PragProg directly (and this is the kind of thing for which you'll want a separate copy for everyone on your team).
Meanwhile, Tim and I are banging out the next article, on abstraction, in the series. If you have any advance thoughts on what you'd like to see covered, drop a comment here or send us a line.
Thanks for reading!
On its way!
Shu Ha Ri
This article expands on some of the thoughts we presented in our original Agile in a Flash blog post on shu ha ri (complete with card facsimile). Shu ha ri is one of the cards we present in the soon-to-be-published PragProg deck.
Under Test
This is the problem with having multiple Blogger accounts starting with A, and writing at night when you are less wary about checking site names when writing. Apologies to readers and to my coauthor for the slip-up.
Agile In A Flash - Whew!!
See the official Pragmatic Bookshelf page!
See the O'Reilly catalog entry!
See the Amazon catalog entry!
See the ongoing series of articles in PragProg Magazine!
See the happy authors!
Thanks to everyone for the support and reviews and ideas and permissions. It's fun to see a dream come true!
Now it's time to go replace my exclamation mark key. ;-)
New PragProg article--What Agile is Not
Latest update: The Agile in a Flash project is nearing final draft, close to being sent to production! Once that happens (perhaps end of next week), it's 6-8 weeks away from shipping to you.
Meanwhile, our latest PragPub article (available in multiple formats--see the PragPub magazine index--is out. It's called "What Agile is Not" and talks about some of our experiences with agile. Looking at the article, though, I wonder about the lead-off sentence for our conclusion paragraph:
"The advice from Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries for successful adoption of Agile Software Development has always been to start with the values. "
But is that true? I believe there have been some recent statements to the contrary on one of the mailing lists. My apologies to Ron/Kent--that's how I've always looked at things, so perhaps I'd projected my misinterpretation on their teachings. Feedback please?
Article at Prag Prog, More to Come!
We've gone a few weeks without a new card here, but it's because we've been working on the final versions of our cards to be published by Pragmatic Publishers "Real Soon Now." You will find a lot of familiar content, but even more polished and even more condensed. You'll get to enjoy physical cards, suitable for sticking and sharing with your whole team or company. Even better yet, they'll have been edited by actual professional editors.
We're not going to quit the blog, but we are going to be available in more forms than ever before. PragProg will release AgileInAFlash as physical cards and as ebooks. Imagine how cool "Courage" or "ABCs of Pair Programming" will look on your hot little iPad or Android phone! You'll have virtual Tim & Jeff everywhere you want to take us. This blog continues to be a place to write your comments, or to see cards never before released into the wild.
When you get your deck(s), take a picture of yourself using the cards and send it to us. We'll be thrilled and honored to see how you use your AgileInAFlash in your daily work!
Blessings.
Tim