When ebook comes out, I am used to pay more for the books, especially when I receive 50% discount (countdown to 2011 from manning) for this Agile ALM book from manning.
This kind of calendar seems quite popular in Western country, I am not sure when Chinese market will import this as new business 
, since we are used to have x-mas now, though it is not traditional holiday.
Ok, back to the book, it worths the pay, and I spend one week to read it completely.
Agile ALM book review
Quick go through
Generally it is an excellent book, since seldom there are books to cover this area, maybe you think it is another busiword for “Agile ALM”, actually it really gives the another angle to think about the ALM (mostly tools inside) to help you to evaluate the tools, mainly he wants to introduce the lightweight tools suite and connect them together.
In Part I, it is kind introduction and strategy thinking.
Michael (author) describes why he introduced Agile ALM and his thinking what it could be, it gives a lot of new thinking on this area why we need ALM and what is the “requirement” for it.
Probably you need to revisit these part after the whole book to understand them more, this is one excellent style for this book, give some theory first, probably you will not understand it quickly, then comes more practical information to tool level, in the end, go back to those theory, you will master it (hopefully).
In Part II, it help you to understand Agile ALM into second levels to start connect with your normal works by describing the scrum (popular agile framework) and task management.
Scrum and Task-based development are two key parts of current ALM trends since all ALM starts with issue management and try to fit for the needs of scrum (planning and release).
Though in MEAP version, Scrum is not well described, but it will be fixed when it is finally released
For the task part, mylyn is quite different approach compare to the normal task management in web sites, it is great it is mentioned here though it is not so detail. (BTW, you can’t expect the book describe everything you want to know, then it is not a book, it is internet
Part III and Part IV are mostly tool description, it is good there are introduction pages in the beginning to give your the relation with Agile ALM, it touchs building (maven), 3pp management (maven repository), CI (teamcity), release (maven, svn), testing (mock tool/TestNG for unit level and FitNesse/Selenium).
Mostly with those tools introduction, you can understand more for Agile ALM, we really need good tools to support your agile WoW, when you go through all those tools, you can understand more on detail of Agile ALM to see which is important features inside.
Other findings in the book
it is always quite challenge to describe tools in the book (long duration for the book before publish), since it is used to be out of date quickly, therefore keep it in good level is key, fortunately it is good in this book.
Summary
Anyway nice to read it if you are doing agile way of working, and you don’t know how to deal with the infrastruture to the changes, it is the book need to buy.
If you don’t want to see details in tools, you can just download first chapter (which is free) to get introduction for agile ALM, though I really encourage you to buy it and master this.
Others
Michael will also present this in jfokus2011 in Stockholm (http://www.jfokus.se/jfokus/speakers.jsp), be there to know more.
By the way, I like the MEAP book (Manning Early Access Program), it gives your the chance to discuss with author directly, and insight thinking, surely if lucky, you can influence the information inside
