5 comments about Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series).

1. As a newcomer to enterprise architecture this book educated me on possibilities for decisions to be made in designing an enterprise architect. It will also give you a language for describing existing characteristics of an existing enterprise application which may use some combination of the patterns describe in this book. The discussion of where to keep session state for a webapp was particularly helpful to me.



2. For me, this book is an invaluable reference for building business apps.
   
   Want help choosing a framework? Want some guidance for solving common business problems? These patterns help solve these kinds of problems.
   
   NOTE: I have tried to find other sources for these patterns, and I have only found Fowlers website, which is really only a summary and recommends purchasing the book.
   
   This book has examples in both Java and C#. You can certainly use these patterns in .NET.
   
   Under .NET you are not actually forced to use the Table Model. I think the purpose of this book is to help you realize this.
   
   There are frameworks for .NET that use the Domain Model and Data Mapper patterns, but you would never know this unless you were familiar with the patterns in this book.
   
   For me, reading this book didn't allow me to write new code, but it did allow me to understand my choice to use a particular framework/technique over another.



3. This is a must read book if you are a developer, architect or in anyway related to technology.



4. Even if you don't do "Enterprise Application" development, this book is a must have in your library. If you have been developing for more than a couple of years and you haven't seen 1/2 of the patterns in this book, then you are probably doing something wrong and this book could greatly help you.
   
   Even if you do know 1/2 or more of the patterns in this book it is a great reference to the details of these patterns. Unless you are a Sophomore Software Engineering Student I'd recommend this book over the GoF book. Gof is a must have too, but if you can only have one. Get this one!



5. This book is a complete beginner's handbook for enterprise patterns.
   
   1) The "Mapping to Relational Database Patterns" section discusses patterns that are completely intuitive. I recall logically coming to this conclusions when I started programming in Visual Basic in 99. Nothing new in this section.
   
   2) The "Concurrency" section is criminal in nature and assumes that the application runs on high-cost server. Process-per-session? Thread-per-request? Come on!! Has the author missed out on the Reactor, Proactor and Active Object patterns (he does reference ACE but only as a reference). These patterns have been recognized as not scalable in the late 90s.
   
   3)The distribution patterns are clearly incomplete and desire a lot of details.
   
   If you're just starting out,as a System Architect :-), you'll find this useful. Otherwise, use MSDN or ACE for enterprise patterns.

5 comments about The Principles of Project Management.

1. disclaimer: I was given a copy of this book to review by the author, Meri Williams, who I met at SXSW 2006.
   
   I really appreciated the checklists, examples, and warning notes; I've littered the book with post-it notes reminding me of things to do, or try, or at least ask questions about. For those managing actual teams, the advice on work styles and issue tracking seems quite useful.
   
   I will quibble with the stand-up meeting suggestion, though. Stand-up meetings are harder than they sound, and require the same kind of focused facilitation as any other meeting.
   
   One minor annoyance: at least two or three of the project phases are described as "most important" in the opening paragraphs of the related chapters. The writing also has a feel to it which I assume is either British or South African -- there isn't anything incomprehensible, but it does give an American a bit of a pause in places.
   
   The section in Closing on handling a "total disconnect" was brief but encouraging, and as someone who's experienced a few, gave me some thoughts about how to handle future situations. The appendices have plenty of useful resources, including recaps of some of the tools mentioned in the main text.
   
   Overall, I think it's a great introductory text, particularly for people who are moving from doing to managing, or who are working on larger projects by themselves. The tone is friendly, professional, and constantly encouraging, making for a slim volume of helpfulness.



2. I don't usually work as a project manager, but I've been in enough projects to recognize most of the pitfalls described in this book.
   
   The book provides a good, common sense approach to project management. Some of it may be overkill for smaller projects, and some of it may not quite cut it for really huge projects, but for anything inbetween it's a worthwhile resource.
   
   I enjoyed Meri's relaxed style of writing (although she uses more exclamation point than one usually expects from a fully sane person :)). The way she shares her personal experience makes her advice all the more credible.
   
   After reading the book, I felt like taking over a project I'm involved with at work, just to put it back on track again.



3. 'The Principles of Project Management' is one of those books that does nearly everything right in my eyes. A small footprint (204 pages = don't say more than you need to), fantastic design, and good writing and content. It's no secret that sitepoint is one of my favorite technical publishers out in the field today and nearly every one of their books gets 5 stars from this reviewer.
   
   This book is no different.
   
   Project Management is a difficult thing to do and do effectively. Managing schedules, leading teams, getting ideas to fruition all takes a lot of hard work and focus. To be a good project manager you have to wear all sort of different hats and it's a daunting task. Like salespeople, if you are a great project manager you can have a lot of success and a lot of times it's the kind of skills that can't be taught, but are ingrained inside you.
   
   But you can make those skills stronger no matter what level project manager you are.
   
   From Gantt charts to tables to delegation, estimates, and becoming an amateur psychologist working with your team, this book is one of the best inros to becoming an effective project manager. You will learn all the necessary skills to be successful and have fun while learning.
   
   If you are an experienced PM you owe it to yourself to read this quick book and if you are newbie this should be required reading. Great content and ideas + a great design make for an outstanding effort and book!!
   
   ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED



4. Do you find yourself responsible for executing projects and need some guidance on how to get the job done? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Meri Williams, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how to get projects completed and delivered on time.
   
   Williams, begins by explaining why Project Management is a difficult thing to do effectively. Then, the author explains why leading teams, managing schedules and implementing ideas, takes a lot of focus and hard work. Next, she gives advice on work styles and issue tracking. The author also discusses why stand-up meetings are very difficult to prepare for. She continues by showing you why closing on handling is a total disconnect. Finally, the author discusses how to measure operational success, ongoing support and maintenance.
   
   This most excellent book aims to lay out defined steps to get projects done right and on time. But, more importantly, the author designed this book for people who are working on larger projects by themselves.



5. 
   This is a short book, but it's packed with useful information about project management. It neatly avoids getting bogged down with PM jargon, instead cutting to the core concepts. It's not designed to get you through a project management qualification (though it might help!), but will certainly help you to become more efficient at managing projects, which at the end of the day is what *really* matters. Aimed at people who want to get projects done, even if they're not officially 'project managers' within their organisation.
   
   The book is broken into five sections - what project management is (and just as importantly, what it isn't), getting started with projects (covering the who, what, where, why and when of project initiation), getting the project done (tools, best practice, project control), the essentials of good project communication, and finally following through - closing off the project.
   
   Rounded off with appendices covering essential project tools, templates, and links to useful software apps, this is a great book for people starting out in project management. And whilst not strictly aimed at experienced project managers, I'm sure that everyone will find something useful to take away.
   
   Great stuff.

1 comments about GO! with Microsoft Office 2007 Introductory (Go! Series).

1. book was a good price, sold with the course disc, only the disc was for the 2003 course.

5 comments about High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers.

1. The author Steve Souders (who at the time of publication was Chief Performance engineer at Yahoo, but is now at Google]) demonstrates fourteen methods that could be employed to increase web page download response times through clear and concise chapters.
   
   The information presented within this book is kept simple and to the point, complete with small code samples and explanations as to why they work. Occasional comparison graphs are scattered throughout the book to illustrate the differences in response times when dealing with some of the methods discussed.
   
   While some of the methods require server side configurations, most others can be dealt with directly by the web programmers themselves. The server side methods enables web developers who wish to make their own sites download faster make better informed decisions with regards to selecting a web hosting service provider by asking in advance what server configurations the hosting providers use.
   
   Also scattered throughout the book are links to handy browser add-ons and other informative links in helping developers keep tabs on performance issues when developing their sites.
   
   All in all, the author definitely knows what he is talking about. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to take their front end development skills higher by designing faster and more lightweight websites which result in better response times for visitors (not to mention save on monthly bandwidth).



2. Great book, really! Easily read, an essential resource for anyone involved in web development, on any level!
   
   However you can honestly find everything almost word for word online. In face if you just download the ySLow and firebug extentions for firefox you can go to any site and see how it uses these runs, and it will link to detailed info on each and everyone, all for free.
   
   So if you hate reading online, then buy this, it is great, but seriosuly its free information.



3. I am no frontend engineer (these are people responsible for the performance of large web sites). However, I am always concerned with speed on the sites I run, so I decided to check out this book.
   
   While most of the tips on it are strictly limited to things you can do only if you have access to your web server (Apache) settings, there's lots of useful information you can put to use if you are a web developer or simply if you have enough control over a web site, to be able to affect its performance (if you manage web content, this is your case).
   
   Great examples of the use of the book to people beyond frontend engineers are recommendations about image types, stylesheet tips and things to do/avoid, in regards to JavaScript.



4. When conversation turns to performance, we often focus on the database, application servers, or a multitude of other backend processes, and completely forget about the front-end: CSS, JavaScript, filesizes, conditional requests, and request pipelining. In this book, Steve Souders documents the best practices for optimizing your front-end experience, which can often yield significant improvements with minimal code changes.
   
   The detailed examples and associated discussions yield a lot of very useful tips - you'll definitely want to have this book near you. Likewise, the examples of dissecting the 10 most popular websites at the end of the book are very helpful, as they highlight the method, and also show how these practices have been adopted by different organizations.
   
   Only word of forewarning: if you've read the YSlow documentation, then you won't find all that much new content in this book. Corollary: you can read the YSlow documentation to get many of the same tips and best practices, for free.



5. Great discussion of common web site performance problems (and how to fix them). The author focuses on content serving, which he claims is where 80-90% of the user response time is spent. Is that really true once you go beyond large web sites such as Yahoo! that have already put a lot of effort into optimizing their back-ends? In any case, the book is so well done I can't not recommend it -- even if most of the information can be found on the web (look for talks given by the author, or the YSlow web site). The only criticism is that the book is rather slim: I'm sure there is a lot more to be said (e.g. on browser rendering performance issues). Looking forward to reading part 2!

5 comments about Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition (Books for Professionals by Professionals).

1. Please buy this book if you haven't explored Windows Presentation Foundation. The separation of the UI (with XAML) and the code-behind page controller (C# or VB.NET) will revolutionize .NET development. If you don't have a designer you must learn Microsoft Expression Blend, but a UI designer will push your view (from Model-View-Controller) to the extreme.
   
   The browser-based XBAP works like a Winform app, but it can be viewed in Internet Explorer. If you've ever tried to create a dirty flag to denote changes in form data in ASP.NET, you know how superior Winforms are for this purpose. XBAPs give you the ability to access the textbox text changed event like Winforms. This takes a ton of JavaScript to accomplish the same programming task in ASP.NET forms.
   
   The update of the application to the client machine (the XBAP runs on the client) can be done with new technolgy called ClickOnce. What a technology!
   
   I've even tried to learn the XAML markup from a very good chapter on this.
   
   This book is really well done. Kudos to the author.



2. I've bought three books about WPF, including Windows Presentation Foundation Foundation Unleashed and Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed. Matthew MacDonald's book is for developers and is what I needed. It uses Visual Studio 2008 and is up to date with current development tools. I've also read his books on ASP.NET and this is one top-notch author. I fully recommend this book.



3. The book is good so far. Only about 150 pages into the book, but so far easy to read, examples range from simple to more advanced. I will post another review upon completion.



4. I generally like Matthew's writing, but this one really fell short of my expectations, esp considering it's a 2nd edition (I've never read the first edition, though).
   
   Pros:
   - it gave a good overview of what WPF is all about(the underlying DirectX etc), and why we need yet another Windows GUI technology.
   
   Cons:
   - it lacks substance, each chapter mostly contains a shallow description of a "feature" of WPF, with some code snippets. The content feels more like a showoff of what WPF can do + some tips & tricks.
   
   - there is no central theme in the book, ie. the author doesn't hold your hand and build a non-trivial app using the key features of WPF. So at the end of the book, i'm still at a loss as to how to re-write some of my Windows Forms apps in WPF.
   
   - it's completely focused on the WPF technology, with hardly any information on the fundamentals of Computer Graphics theory and how it's related to WPF. I guess for most folks who just want to cobble togther a form with a few data bound controls in it, this prob isn't a problem. But to create commercial apps in WPF, this book is just not enough.



5. I love the Petzold book Applications = Code + Markup, but it covers a subset of WPF and is out of date now. Pro WPF in C# 2008 is up-to-date, covers a much larger subset, and doesn't shy away from the hard stuff. Almost every time I turn to this book, I find either an answer or a new pointer that leads to the answer on-line. Yesterday, I found a method called TemplatedParent that is ill-covered in my other books. Today, I found IScrollInfo. Highly recommended as a well-written, comprehensive, up-to-date WPF reference for intermediate to advanced developers. For starting out, I still recommend the Petzold book, which really tries hard to build understanding.

5 comments about Java Persistence with Hibernate.

1. As of the writing of this review in early 2008, there is no other work in the marketplace quite like this text. At over 800 pages, Bauer and King cover a lot of ground, starting with the object/relational persistence paradigm and continuing with domain models, mapping, and conversations, addressing specialized situations along the way such as working with legacy databases. Database development is not for the faint of heart, and serious work in this space requires understanding of both object-oriented technology and relational database theory, not to mention the associated business domains. Although this book has received a relatively high amount of positive reviews, readers have also understandably shared their complaints. While at the same time Java Persistence with Hibernate is probably not for everyone, there really are not that many alternatives to learning the necessary material. As with other development frameworks, it is a given that familiarity with the online documentation for Hibernate is required, with the realization that this documentation really only starts to be of benefit once the associated tools start being used. This book provides solid background to prepare the reader for the road ahead, but the reader should also be reminded that the entire book does not need to be read, nor does the material need to be read in order from front to back in order to prepare for that road. Much of the material will probably just not make sense until one gets their feet wet with the technologies. These are the reasons I choose to refer to this text as graduate school training. As Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, once said, "experience teaches nothing without theory, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play". The change in name for this second edition of the book reflect the fact that Hibernate is now an implementation of the Java Persistence API. Be aware that the authors traverse back and fourth between the conformance of Hibernate to JPA, and what Hibernate provides apart from JPA. I think the decision of the authors to present material on these technologies side-by-side was a wise one, because it helps keep the reader reminded that these are not separate technologies and that there are architectural tradeoffs between sticking to JPA and using Hibernate functionality beyond the specification. Well recommended.



2. This is the the BEST book for hibernate. better than hibernate in action and other books.
   
   Gavin King Rocks.



3. Got this book when I started working with hibernate at work. This book and its sample code saved me weeks of effort.
   
   Hibernate is an OK framework, but a steep learning curve. This book will help you significantly reduce that learning curve.



4. I have finally found a great resource on persistence. This book allows you find enough detail quickly to get going and enough in-depth knowledge and understanding to keep you coming back. A must own.



5. Some of the reviews for this book are a little harsh.
   
   This is the most complete book on Hibernate on the market. It covers everything, and I mean everything. From mapping to annotations, to whatever, it's in here.
   
   The book is written by the makers of Hibernate, and you can find an answer to pretty much every question you'll ever have explained in extreme detail, and in a very, very technical way.
   
   The book uses the Caveat Emptor application as a reference. You keep going back to that example, which you can download from the hibernate site. It is a very complete and intricately developed application that is a reference for how to develop enterprise ready applications that could be deployed to pretty much any mission critical environment.
   
   This book is amazing. Some reviewers have tried to use this as a Dummies book or How To book and have been frustrated, and have given this book poor reviews. That's not fair. Imagine trying to learn to swing a baseball (or cricket) bat by taking pitches from a major league pitcher. You wouldn't learn a thing, as every pitch zoomed by you at 100mph. This book is like the big league pitcher, helping you develop and design applications that are ready for the big leagues. When you understand that, you can understand why people who are new to the technology, and looking for very simple and straight forward examples, can get frustrated with this book and give it 1 or 2 stars. Really, those reviews are not fair.
   
   If you are new to hibernate, you should start of with something a like Hibernate Made Easy: Simplified Data Persistence with Hibernate and JPA (Java Persistence API) Annotations. If you are using mapping files, then Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook is the other book you should get.
   
   Overall, this is a five star book written by the people that know Hibernate the most. We're very luck to have a book like this to help guide us through the really, really, really tough stuff.

5 comments about Mastering Regular Expressions.

1. An incredible book. Absolutely incredible. It will take 200 lines of your code and reduce it to 1 or 2 lines. It will open your mind to search and replace possibilities. Your life will change (just kidding). It's a great deep book.
   
   However, I agree with the comment that one should not begin learning regex with this book. it's a little too advanced. Go on the internet, get an introduction. Or else, buy one of the introductory books on the subject first. But definitely get around to buying this book!



2. How deep down the rabbit hole do you really NEED to go? I had a serious need to get on top of regular expressions to solve one particular problem. I looked at several online tutorials which didn't take me where I needed to go, so I ordered Mastering Regular Expressions after reading the Amazon reviews. I always look at the negative reviews first. In spite of the negative reviews I ordered the book with an open mind.
   When the book arrived I began reading it with enthusiasm. In the preface there is a small section on "How to Read This Book". I bought into the author's suggestion to read the book's first six chapters first. I was captivated through the first three chapters, and then somewhere in chapter 4 I began to get very weary with information overload. After putting the book down for a couple of days I decided to skip the rest and use what I needed to write the one regular expression I had need of. The book did successfully help me accomplish this, so I gave it 3 stars. Not only did it give me the information I needed that the online tutorials didn't, it also gave me the confidence I needed. For that, which I am grateful, I would have liked to have given it more stars. I think many of those in need of learning about regular expression could be well served by a "lite-edition" of this book. Perhaps someday when I have the time and the need I may try to wade through the rest of the book, but as it is now Mastering Regular Expressions took me far farther down the rabbit hole than I really needed or wanted to go.
   If you need to get on top of Regular Expressions, I would recommend this book, however just be ready to be taken far deeper than the average coder probably needs to go.



3. Quite a comprehensive guide to regular expressions. Gets very detailed in the areas that it covers. However, definitely not a 'beginner's guide'. I highly recommend that you are already comfortable with the basis of regular expressions before picking up this book. You will get way more out of it if this is not your first introduction to it. Comfort and proficiency with Perl would also be a big help. Title is correct though, this is a guide to 'mastering' regular expressions, not learning them from the beginning.



4. I went through several books and online tutorials and never found anything that did a good comprehensive job of explaining regular expressions. This book does. If you are having trouble "getting it", I highly encourage reading this book. You will be extremely enlightened even after the first few chapters.



5. The book is robust and goes into alot detail. I liked the comparing and contrasting between the various RegEx implementations. I had a difficult time digesting some of the detail. In particular, the analogies confused me and I felt the author went overboard with them. Many times, I had to backtrack to understand what was being discussed. However, regular expressions is a complex topic and the author did a good job easing into the concepts. An additional plus was with inline page citation - this helped to find the page corresponding to the topic being discussed.
   I would have liked shorter chapters with chapter summaries and more diagrams in place of analogies. Ultimately, Mastering Regular Expressions is a good book referencing a complex topic.

5 comments about LINQ in Action.

1. If you want to learn Linq, whether its data stored in a database, in XML files, DataSets or just in-memory objects this is the book for you.
   
   I found it so easy to understand, and really comprehend. There are lots of examples, but not too many. After reading the first few chapters you become comfortable with the concept and syntax of the new language extensions.
   
   The authors style had just the right combination of light humor and serious programming. He seems able to express complicated issues with the greatest of ease, and obviously has enoumous knowledge on the subject.
   
   If that was not enough, there are forums avalable where you can raise queries and doubts and the author will do his best to accomodate you, again with a nice and easy flowing style.
   
   The book is a 'must have' to any serious Linq programmer (or want-to-be Linq programmer!) and will certainly occupy a prominent place on my bookshelf.
   
   Highly recommended!
   
   Regards,
   Martin.



2. I am disappointed with this book - it did not meet my expectations. I found many examples and it is really hard to use them because the author hardly explains where all comes from and why I should go this way and not another one. It sometimes confuses why, where and for what purpose the author shows an example and whether it suits my case. It is hard to decide because there are almost no explanations about roots of examples and basic theory.
   However, I am happy with the fact that more and more books about LINQ come up and I do hope to find a proper one for me. Unfortunately, for now, I have to move from one book to another one for finding a solution.



3. This is a very nicely written book.
   Clear explanations, concepts are introduced gradually and build on each other with no forward references, simple and to the point code samples, good and appropriate pace, and very easy to read and understand.
   
   I was actually amazed by this book. I read a couple of books/month, and this book reminded me a lot of the quality of classic CS books, which is so hard to come by nowadays -- think "The unix programming environment", but more accessible.
   This is in sharp contrast with most of the today books in the (programming/CS) field which tend to have a big ratio of page-count to information (lots of screenshots, or 101/intro-level intermixed content, lots of fluff). This is not a book that you can shrink without loosing quality.



4. This book is best used with a companion book covering basic C# terms. I found that I had to refer to the internet for explanations of terms.
   
   Explanations, not just definitions. That need slowed my reading to a crawl. though I have been using C# for the past year.



5. LINQ in Action, at 600 pages provides a substantial introduction and in-depth discussion of LINQ, its history, its impact, and most important - its syntax and features. I found this book easy to navigate, given that many developers (I know I do) moved between LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML and LINQ to SQL througout the working day. When you stumble over a particular query, I found it easy to find a relavent sample in the index.
   
   If you haven't had an opportunity to move into the .NET 3.5 Framework world and use C# .0 or VB 0 syntax yet, then this book will arm you with the background necessary to move productively into the new 'Query Centric' programming paradigm - one free of complex 'for' loops and deeply nested 'if' statements (and free of embedded SQL string statements).
   
   Although hefty in size, I recommend this book if you seriously want to move beyond the basics and really understand how to use LINQ.

5 comments about Professional SharePoint 2007 Development (Programmer to Programmer).

1. I always find WROX books are the best value for money. This book is no exception. The details this book provides is atypical and that is what I find very useful. Devil is in the details and we need that for programming.
   
   If you are interested in Solutions Development on SharePoint Platform, this book is a very good companion.



2. Working on a few projects I needed to find some good Sharepoint 2007 reference books. This book is excellent with the examples it provides and the way they authors explain it to you. Very easy to understand, clear and concise.
   
   I do however wish they had more real world examples like for example when working with events in sharepoint they would show you how to retrieve the id's from the list lookups when assigning to another list programmatically, or how to change the permission of a selected item for a selected specific group or person, or access active directory.
   
   Other than that, it is a good book that will help you get along your way.



3. I was given this book by one of the Author (John Holiday) during a training on Enterprise Content Management. I have collected quite a few books on SharePoint most proclaiming to be a developers guide but they have chapters after chapters devoted to configuring WWS 3.0 or MOSS. However, this book gives you a very good start and provides step by step guide on creating various solution.
   I would recommend this for all beginners and intermediate developers!!!



4. The book is good but the source code of Chapter 13 is missing.
   It's very frustrating to learn a new technology and see problems with the source code.
   Wish the authors can take time to check the source-code is uptodate before releasing a book, or at least put it for download after complaints.
   If the authors can update the source code, it will be great.
   Otherwise a good book.



5. Some of the chapters are totally beneficial while others offer very little and explain things poorly.
   
   I guess if it fits a need it;s worth it, but there was nothing in here you could not Google when needed. i guess it's supposed to take a programmer and show them how to program with SharePoint. if you have time to go page by page and are new to SharePoint you will get more out of it.
   I would stick with the Ted Pattison book persoanlly...

5 comments about Agile Software Development with SCRUM (Series in Agile Software Development).

1. This book provides an excellent road map for the Agile development.
   Must have on every manager's book shelf.



2. I'm the resident 'Scrum Lord' at my company and I purchased this book early on in my 'Scrum' travels. It's been a handy quick read resource for our entire company. We bought a 1/2 dozen to pass around when we got new hires so they could read up a bit before they went to our in-house training in Scrum/Agile. For folks with just a little time, we suggested they read chapters 2 and 3 to get the gist of it. If they had more time...we suggested the read the whole book. Our in house training was inspired by some of the concepts used in this book. Its a great one! All of my 'loaner copies' are checked out somewhere here at work!



3. 
   This is the one book you buy everyone on your team and tell them to read as the first step to implementing scrum. It's well written, clear, and consise. Most people only need to read chapters 2-4, 5-7 are on control theory, etc that is interesting but not required.
   
   This is good stuff 'straight from the horses mouth'.



4. ASDS is a very good book, but only for the few who want to be Scrum experts. The material is thorough, and not necessarily easy to get through, in part because the Schwaber and Beedle walk through every part of Scrum in detail, as well as cover situations that likely don't apply to most, and they even go through philosophical views that some may care little about. To be sure, there are gems in the book, and I learned a few important points, but I have been to ScrumMaster certification training, read two other agile books, and been mentored by a CSM/PMP. I feel the book only moved me from 80% comfort level with Scrum to 85%. If you are a consultant managing projects, or you want to teach, coach or train in this area, read the book. If you a internal project manager,product manager, or IT manager, I recommend you get Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide (The Agile Software Development Series)and read the section on Scrum. It's simpler, cleaner, and the rest of the book gives good background to agile and options you may want to consider. If you are a team or development lead, or the senior developer, get Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional). It's an even easier read, focussed solely on Scrum and gives lots of enjoyable stories of real situations the author went through, good and bad.



5. This is a good book with lots of valuable information around the empirical nature of Scrum. For someone who was central to creating Scrum, the book doesn't offer much more.
   
   It's broken up into three parts: Overview of Scrum / Why it works / Case studies.
   
   The overview of Scrum is poor at best. There are much simpler ways to communicate it. If you don't know anything about Scrum then this book probably won't help get you started.
   
   The "Why it works" chapters were much more interesting and valuable. It takes you through the epirical nature of scrum and why previous methodologies have failed. The most interesting part is the brief exposition around the psychological, anthropological and systematical viewpoints around Scrum. Like much of the book, this could have been written better and with more indepth information, but still meets a basic need.
   
   The case studies and ancillary information in the last few chapters feel hasty and are of little value. Many of the examples (although based on actual events) feel contrived and are simplified so much that they aren't highly illuminating.
   
   Overall the book wasn't the greatest but it did provide me with some value. The editing is quite poor and there are numerous mistakes throughout. The general layout of the page is also problematic and makes it difficult to read.
   
   Most laughable however are the images and graphics. They look like they were made in MSPaint and screen capped into the book.