Agile Sherpa: A Gentle Guide to the Agile Landscape

There's tons of resources on agile and lean practices out there, but the hard part is finding a great site where agile beginners and advanced knowledge-seekers can find lots of useful information and community events or training.  Agile tool-vending veteran Version One has created a slick website with all of these things called AgileSherpa.org.  Here was the elevator statement for Agile Sherpa's charter when it was first being discussed: "A gentle guide to the best of the agile landscape, wherever it lives."  Now that it is complete and fully-featured, Agile Sherpa is your guide to the agile mountaintop.  



"The Agile Sherpa website was an idea knocking around the VersionOne halls for the past four + years. We wanted to create a reference site for agile methods that provided an information hub for all things agile. A place that provided information with no axe to grind - no predisposition to any particular agile method or practice. A place to help folks get going and stay going along their journey to agility.

Our goal is to provide a platform for learning and sharing information about agile development practices and the agile community. Our hope is that Agile Sherpa continuously evolves - perpetually in beta and is never quite ‘done’. Kind of like the journey to agility itself. Inspect and adapt, my friend. --'About' page of AgileSherpa.org"

Intro to Agile

The first section of Agile Sherpa is a full-bodied introduction to agile development.  It covers six categories of agile development including:

• What is Agile Development?
• Why Agile?
• A Brief History of Agile
• Methodologies
• Roles
• Team Workspaces

Training

Looking to hone your skills, learn new techniques, or gain certifications?  The training section has a full array of classes that are consistently added by the site moderators and community members .  You can sort classes by month, region, trainer, or cost.  Classes can be listed as either beginner, intermediate, or advanced.  

Events

Want to find a conference or seminar in your area (or on the web)?  The events section can provide you with a calendar of significant agile events.  These can also be sorted by region and month.  The listings also show the price.  However, many are free.

Coach

The Coach section talks about all the various techniques that can be utilized in planning and practices.  It covers planning and management categories such as:

• Product Planning
• Release Planning
• Iteration Planning
• Review
• Metrics

The Coach section also covers engineering practices:

• Test Driven Development
• Pair Programming
• Continuous Integration
• Refactoring
• Emergent Design

Resources

Finally, we have the resources section, which includes links to useful websites, books (reading lists), forums, and resource downloads.  Some of the downloads currently featured on the front page include an agile checklist and an agile poster.