Are you adopting one or more Agile practices or seriously thinking about trying one or more practices out on your team?  Have you read any of the Agile methodology books on Extreme Programming, Scrum, or Test Driven Development and are theoretically convinced about at least trying the practices? 

Or perhaps you’re coming off your first project and you’ve been asked to join another team to help them succeed as you did previously.  Of course every project is different; are the same practices you used last time going to be as effective on the next project?  It depends!  The information in this section helps you get past “it depends!” to determine what practices should be adopted and give you some hints how they may need to be adapted.

Or maybe you are unlucky enough to have been part of a failing Agile project (or possibly are still on one).  Agile adoption patterns will help you get an idea why the practices you are using may not be applicable.  Be agile about your Agile practices.

If any of the scenarios above fit, then this section on Agile adoption patterns is for you – it helps you look at the individual practices and their relationships and gives you a strategy that has been used successfully several times on multiple projects by multiple companies.  It also provides you with warnings concerning how practices have gone wrong before and how you can recognize and respond to the problems that occur.  This is not just one person’s opinion or an untried method – the patterns you will read here all come from real world project experience.

Books:

• Agile Adoption Patterns, The Technical Cluster.  This book is a precursor to the next book on the list and is freely available from InfoQ.  It covers the technical practices such as test-first development, refactoring, and automated acceptance tests.  It is useful for grass-roots, developer-led adoptions and is an opportunity to get a feel for agile adoption patterns, how they work, and the overall approach.
• Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roamap to Organizational Success. This book covers over 35 Agile practices in both the technical and project management realms.  The first part of the book focuses on creating a tailored adoption strategy to address your current environment and the second part is a catalog of the different practices.  If you are interested in this book and want to get a taste for the book, you can download a sample chapter from InformIT. Just click on the "sample content" tab to download a pdf of one of the chapters.

Online articles:

• “Agile Adoption for Organizational Change: Improving Time to Market”, Cutter Consortium: Agile Product and Project Management, Vol. 9. No. 4, 2008.
• "Scaling Up Agile Adoption by Scaling Down: Focusing on Individual Skills for Successful Agile Teams and Organizations", Cutter Consortium: Agile Product and Project Management, Vol. 10. No.1, 2009.
• Case Study: Targeted Agile Adoption Using Patterns, InfoQ, Jan. 2007.

• White Paper - Leaning IT: Applying the Principle of Pull to Scale Agile Teams

  By: Ryan Martens & Jean Tabaka

  Reaping the benefits of Agile software development beyond the team level is an enticing proposition. In fact, in today’s competitive climate and brutal economy, perhaps it is even more than that — it is a necessity. Based on documented successes, organizations are recognizing the business imperative to “go big” with Agile and as a result, they are confronting the confusion and churn of when and how to scale their Agile adoption. This white paper introduces the Lean principle of Pull and applies it as a theme for prioritizing actions and practices within Agile Teams and Programs.

Interviews and presentations:

• Adopting Agile Practices, InfoQ, Jan. 2009.

Other media:

• Agile Adoption Refcard for Decreasing Time To Market. This is a cheat-sheet from dzone focused on the practices needed for improving time to market.
• Agile Adoption Refcard for Reducing Cost.  This is a cheat-sheet from dzone focused on the practices that are helpful in reducing the cost of software development.