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There are many books on agile methods and software development best practices available today. So why write another book on the topic?

There are a number of reasons: First of all, we do not believe in taking a book and following it word for word. We rather trust in action and daily practice. The book you are holding in your hands describes a set of process patterns that have worked well for us in the past. By constantly remixing and improving them, we ensure that they continue to fit the needs of our evolving company. In fact, the Co-Pilot includes a framework for adapting the process to changes, thus driving it further as we write. Hence, this book does not describe a specific menu to cook in the software kitchen, but it describes a list of ingredients and spices that can be mixed and matched.

The second reason for turning our practices into written form is: the ideas described in the Co-Pilot may be reused by other companies in other environments applying a similar mix and match approach. The way of working defines and significantly influences a company’s culture, but it can only become culture if you are convinced of the practices. We hope that the processes and methods described in the Co-Pilot will entice you to choose some and invent your own flavor of an agile software development process to be implemented at your company. The name of this book—Co-Pilot—reflects this idea. It serves as guidance and inspiration and provides inputs, but you remain the pilot in charge.

The processes and ideas that the Co-Pilot describes have roots in the history of our company, Comerge. Comerge grew in its first ten months from four employees to over twenty. During this rapid evolution, we were confronted with various managerial and technological challenges.

Coming to a slower growth pace in recent months (we are now almost three years old) motivated us to look back and identify the ideas that helped us master these challenges while still satisfying the needs of our customers. Many of these ideas have their roots in our experience as employees or co-workers of inspiring proponents of agile software methods: Benno Baumgartner and Till Bay have worked at Erich Gamma’s lab, five of us worked for Bertrand Meyer at the Chair of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich, and others have managed outsourcing projects with programmers located in Eastern Europe. The Co-Pilot collects these experiences and the best practices of our past and present.

We hope that you enjoy the read and that it inspires you to put some of it into action at your company.

We would like to thank the following people for making this book possible: Daniela Bomatter, Julian Tschannen, Geraldine von Roten, and Urs Doenni for their reviews of the drafts, Eva Jutzeler for her fantastic layout and drawings, and all our customers and employees for their constant support and encouragement. You are great and together we make the shipping of high quality software happen and safely land agile software projects.

November 2010

Till Bay, Bernd Schoeller, Benno Baumgartner, Beat Herlig, Dennis Rietmann, and Michela Pedroni