This is an excellent book for any software developer, manager, QA analyst, or tester that wants to understand an intelligent way to build software in a rapidly changing environment. If fast-paced, high requirements volatility, and uncertainty characterize your development environment, and you can't figure out how to succeed, then Adaptive Software Development by James Highsmith can help. It offers an innovative approach grounded in the theory of complex adaptive systems, and it's both well researched and timely. I am sure the software soldiers and their commanders operating in turbulent times stand to gain from this book. In my experience, management is the most critical component of a project, and the hardest to change.
Adaptation is a necessary and critical skill of competent managers.
Adaptive Software Development is a thought-provoking book. I enjoyed the mountain-climbing examples, and was able to adapt those examples to projects that I have worked on. The approach combines customer focus groups, versioning, time-boxed management, and active prototyping. The book does not provide a set of prescriptive rules or tasks, but a framework of concepts, practices, and guidelines. The book uses mountain climbing as a metaphor throughout, so that we clearly see how accomplishing something difficult requires us to deal with the realities of risk and uncertainty on the way to our goal. . . .