Review By: Ann E. Drinkwater
05/13/2011"SDLC 3.0: Beyond a Tacit Understanding of Agile" discusses the application of lean, agile, the unified process, and other practices impacting software development. The author discusses why certain methodologies work while others fall short. The landscape is changing, and we all need to respond to change faster and in a more organized and collaborative fashion. This material provides many useful considerations, charts, UML diagrams, and other points of reference on the topic.

While there is a lot of value to this material, I felt it could have been better organized, with more focus on the flow of topics. Significant research went into creating this book, and I often felt that I needed to independently tie concepts together, versus reading through the compilation on paper. There are also a number of typos within the book, and some of the diagrams are difficult to read. My personal preference when selecting independent learning materials is to choose those with more practical references and scenarios demonstrating concepts. There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, so scenarios and more practical examples can further clarify and help the reader relate to the ideas and concepts.

Those at varying functions within the IT realm would benefit from the author’s theory, research, and ideas, but the text is mostly targeted to those in process improvement roles within IT. Someone highly technical and focused on writing code may not be as interested in some of the topics, but the topics could still apply. Being in project and business management, the areas of most interest to me were:

• The Standish Group’s Chaos Report
• The diagram on the history of modern software engineering methods and the descriptions following this diagram
• Discussions of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) 3.0, its benefits, and the future of software engineering
• Earned value
• Waste aversion and types of waste
• Adaptive management
• The lean TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) workflow diagram

Being that the book covers lean, agile, and the next generation of the SDLC, this material will be applicable until new revelations or approaches evolve. Even when this occurs, this material would be useful for its charts, diagrams, and history and progression of the SDLC.