It looks like the “Google Browser” finally landed.

Seeing as I am a Google fanboy, I’ve been waiting for this the second I heard it was happening.  The fact that they got Scott McCloud to create a 38 page comic detailing Chrome’s features adds bonus points!

From my perspective, the three most interesting features, in order of importance are;

• Separate threads for each tab/plugin/window.
• Javascript compiler
• Open source

Recently I’ve been looking at escaping the standard “Waterfall” approach to projects and the development lifecycle. There are many reasons behind this shift, not just the “everyone works in an agile manner” thought, here is a small list;

• Client involvement and “buy in”.
• Easier incorporation of ideas and changes.
• Ability to change direction to meet the changing demands of the client.
• Reduction of risk.

I have had issue in the past of seeing the benefits of agile practices, mainly from reading and listening to preachers and evangelists giving sermons on agility from a highly theoretical, high level manner.  What I found lacking was an easy to understand, entry level discussion on what works, and what doesn’t.

Whilst at the qCon conference, I picked up a couple of books for free in print that InfoQ make available on their website.  One of these publications gave me that low level basic understanding and view of agile that I needed.

Scrum and XP from the Trenches

This book walks through the concepts of the Agile development methodologies from the perspective of a developer, the author Henrik Kniberg, has implemented many projects using the agile concepts, and through all the struggle and teething problems, has written his experience and approach down in an easy to understand way.  It is important to note that this isn’t a theoretical “how you should work” it’s his own experience of how they did work.

I have found it an invaluable resource and have encorporated many of it’s teachings into my current way of working.