We are avid readers on the topic of Agile, and we’re going to share some of the latest and greatest titles. Be sure to check out our Fundamental Agile Books section below for all levels of Agile practitioners.
In the coming weeks, we will be updating this page to provide you with our monthly top picks.
Essential Agile Books (Must-Reads)
1 – Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition)
Author: Alistair Cockburn
2 – Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd Edition)
Author: Jim Highsmith
3 – Becoming Agile: …in an imperfect world
Authors: Greg Smith, Ahmed Sidky
4 – The Art of Agile Development
Author: James Shore
5 – Agile Estimating and Planning
Author: Mike Cohn
6 – Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility
Authors: Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott
7 – Agile Project Management with Scrum
Author: Ken Schwaber
8 – The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility
Authors: Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick
9 – Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Authors: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber
10 – Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition
Author: Lyssa Adkins
Book of the Month – Archive
Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business
Author: David J. Anderson
Project management has undergone significant changes since the previous edition of this book. So, along with updates reflecting the PMBOK Guide, 5th edition, this Seventh Edition of Effective Project Management addresses some fundamental changes in the nature of a project. You will learn an approach to project management that recognizes the project environment and adapts accordingly. Rather than one-size-fits-all solutions, you will learn to think, review, analyze, and select the project management approach best suited to each individual project.
This book remains an effective text for trainers and educators as well as a practical how-to guide for project managers. Discover:
- An in-depth understanding of the PMBOK process groups
- How to scope, plan, launch, monitor, control, and close a TPM project
- Techniques for dealing with the complex and uncertain PM landscape
- A comparison of Linear, Incremental, Iterative, Adaptive, and Extreme PMLC models
- Prevention and intervention strategies for distressed projects
- Advice on organizing multiple team projects and managing a continuous process improvement program
- Ways to establish an enterprise project portfolio management process
- How to create a practical, project-based model of an enterprise
Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme
Author: Robert K. Wysocki
Thousands of IT professionals are being asked to make Scrum succeed in their organizations–including many who weren’t involved in the decision to adopt it. If you’re one of them, The Scrum Field Guide will give you skills and confidence to adopt Scrum more rapidly, more successfully, and with far less pain and fear. Long-time Scrum practitioner Mitch Lacey identifies major challenges associated with early-stage Scrum adoption, as well as deeper issues that emerge after companies have adopted Scrum, and describes how other organizations have overcome them. You’ll learn how to gain “quick wins” that build support, and then use the flexibility of Scrum to maximize value creation across the entire process.
In 30 brief, engaging chapters, Lacey guides you through everything from defining roles to setting priorities to determining team velocity, choosing a sprint length, and conducting customer reviews. Along the way, he explains why Scrum can seem counterintuitive, offers a solid grounding in the core agile concepts that make it work, and shows where it can (and shouldn’t) be modified. Coverage includes
- Getting teams on board, and bringing new team members aboard after you’ve started
- Creating a “definition of done” for the team and organization
- Implementing the strong technical practices that are indispensable for agile success
- Balancing predictability and adaptability in release planning
- Keeping defects in check
- Running productive daily standup meetings
- Keeping people engaged with pair programming
- Managing culture clashes on Scrum teams
- Performing “emergency procedures” to get sprints back on track
- Establishing a pace your team can truly sustain
- Accurately costing projects, and measuring the value they deliver
- Documenting Scrum projects effectively
- Prioritizing and estimating large backlogs
- Integrating outsourced and offshored components
Packed with real-world examples from Lacey’s own experience, this book is invaluable to everyone transitioning to agile: developers, architects, testers, managers, and project owners alike.
The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year
Author: Mitch Lacey
Kanban in Action is a down-to-earth, no-frills, get-to-know-the-ropes introduction to kanban. It’s based on the real-world experience and observations from two kanban coaches who have introduced this process to dozens of teams. You’ll learn the principles of why kanban works, as well as nitty-gritty details like how to use different color stickies on a kanban board to help you organize and track your work items.
About the Book
Kanban in Action is a practical introduction to kanban. Written by two kanban coaches who have taught the method to dozens of teams, the book covers techniques for planning and forecasting, establishing meaningful metrics, visualizing queues and bottlenecks, and constructing and using a kanban board.
Written for all members of the development team, including leaders, coders, and business stakeholders. No experience with kanban is required.
What’s Inside
– How to focus on work in process and finish faster
– Examples of successful implementations
– How team members can make informed decisions
Kanban in Action
Author(s): Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden
This is the best book about Modern Scrum that you will find anywhere!
This is the Second Edition of the book, and it has been updated to include the latest, and greatest, information about Scrum.
Scrum is the world’s most popular Agile Development Framework, and it has been changing constantly since its discovery in 1995. Over the years, Scrum users have found what does (and does not) actually work, and the Scrum Framework has changed to keep up (part of Scrum’s own inspect and adapt process). The rate of change has slowed down over time and, as of late 2013, there is hope that Scrum has stabilized. This book presents that stabilized version of Scrum, along with discussions of why and how it got that way.
Dan and Doug wrote this book in order to help people with their implementations of Scrum, and to make sure they have the most current understanding of Scrum to work with. They have found that many of the ideas found in older versions of Scrum are not only out-of-date, but harmful.
Both Dan and Doug have trained and coached thousands of people, most of whom are already using Scrum. In spite of the fact that they have read about Scrum, have been trained or coached in Scrum, and are using Scrum, their most common complaint is that they need help to do it ‘right’. Dan and Doug have found that many (if not most) of them need some help.
This book is for them and others like them.
This book is not an introductory text. Dan and Doug assume that those who read this book know, or think they know, something about Scrum. This book takes a deep, exploratory, look into the Scrum framework (as it has changed over time), and offers advice about how to think about it, and how to use it. Some of this advice is philosophical, some is pragmatic, and all of it is practical.
Dan and Doug are brutally consistent and true to the essence of Scrum. This book is not the result of an academic exercise; every suggestion or conclusion in this book is grounded in real-life issues they have encountered, and suggestions that they have made for teams and people they have coached or trained.
Exploring Scrum: the Fundamentals
Authors: Dan Rawsthorne, Doug Shimp
Today’s new breed, eXtreme projects are different. They feature high speed, high change, high complexity, high risk, and high stress. While traditional projects follow the classic model of ready, aim, fire, eXtreme project managers succeed by shooting the gun and then redirecting the bullet while not loosing sight of their moving target. eXtreme Project Management provides a practical guide for leaders working under high risk and high pressure while producing the desired bottom-line results. Based on Doug DeCarlo’s extensive experience in working with more than 250 project teams, his eXtreme project management model is built around an integrated set of principles, values, skills, tools, and practices proven to consistently work under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty. eXtreme project management is based on the premise that you don’t manage the unknown the same way you manage the known. It’s a people-centric approach to high performance that makes quality of life a fundamental part of the project venture.
eXtreme Project Management provides a practical guide for leaders working under high risk and high pressure while producing the desired bottom-line results. Based on Doug DeCarlo’s extensive experience in working with more than 250 project teams, his eXtreme project management model is built around an integrated set of principles, values, skills, tools, and practices proven to consistently work under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty.
eXtreme project management is based on the premise that you don’t manage the unknown the same way you manage the known. It’s a people-centric approach to high performance that makes quality of life a fundamental part of the project venture.
Throughout the book, eXtreme Project Management shows project managers, sponsors, and executives how to keep projects in control and deliver business value in the face of volatility by
- Developing a change-tolerant, quantum mind-set
- Applying principles of self-mastery
- Gaining and sustaining commitment to the project mission
- Unleashing motivation and innovation
- Establishing trust and confidence
- Implementing a flexible project management model
- Establishing a real-time communications infrastructure
- Minimizing bureaucracy
- Improving organizational agility
eXtreme project management is a dynamic and exhilarating model for any kind of project that features high doses of speed and volatility, and where failure is not an option.
eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility
Author: Doug DeCarlo
It is widely recognized that moving from traditional to agile approaches to build software solutions is a critical source of competitive advantage. Mainstream agile approaches that are indeed suitable for small projects require significant tailoring for larger, complex enterprise projects. In Disciplined Agile Delivery, Scott W. Ambler and Mark Lines introduce IBM’s breakthrough Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework, which describes how to do this tailoring. DAD applies a more disciplined approach to agile development by acknowledging and dealing with the realities and complexities of a portfolio of interdependent program initiatives.
Ambler and Lines show how to extend Scrum with supplementary agile and lean strategies from Agile Modeling (AM), Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Unified Process (UP), and other proven methods to provide a hybrid approach that is adaptable to your organization’s unique needs. They candidly describe what practices work best, why they work, what the trade-offs are, and when to consider alternatives, all within the context of your situation.
Disciplined Agile Delivery addresses agile practices across the entire lifecycle, from requirements, architecture, and development to delivery and governance. The authors show how these best-practice techniques fit together in an end-to-end process for successfully delivering large, complex systems–from project initiation through delivery.
Coverage includes:
- Scaling agile for mission-critical enterprise endeavors
- Avoiding mistakes that drive poorly run agile projects to chaos
- Effectively initiating an agile project
- Transitioning as an individual to agile
- Incrementally building consumable solutions
- Deploying agile solutions into complex production environments
- Leveraging DevOps, architecture, and other enterprise disciplines
- Adapting your governance strategy for agile projects
Based on facts, research, and extensive experience, this book will be an indispensable resource for every enterprise software leader and practitioner–whether they’re seeking to optimize their existing agile/Scrum process or improve the agility of an iterative process.
Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner’s Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise
Author: Scott W. Ambler
Increasingly, large product-development organizations are turning to lean thinking, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum to sustainably and quickly deliver value and innovation. Drawing on their long experience leading and guiding lean and agile adoptions for large, multisite, and offshore product development, internationally recognized consultant and best-selling author Craig Larman and former leader of the agile transformation at Nokia Networks Bas Vodde share the key action tools needed for success.
Coverage includes
- Frameworks for large-scale Scrum for multi hundred-person product groups
- Testing and building quality in
- Product management and the end of the “contract game between business and R&D”
- Envisioning a large release, and planning for multiteam development
- Low-quality legacy code: why it’s created, and how to stop it
- Continuous integration in a large multisite context
- Agile architecting
- Multisite or offshore development
- Contracts and outsourced development
In a competitive environment that demands ever-faster cycle times and greater innovation, the practices inspired by lean thinking and agile principles are ever-more relevant.Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development will help people realize a lean enterprise—and deliver on the significant benefits of agility.
Authors:
The basics of being a ScrumMaster are fairly straightforward: At face value all a ScrumMaster needs to do is facilitate the Scrum process and remove impediments. But being a great ScrumMaster, one who truly embodies the principles of servant-leadership and helps move a team to the high performance levels possible with Scrum, is much harder and much more elusive. In this book Geoff shares a collection of stories and practical guidance, drawn from over ten years of coaching numerous Scrum teams that will guide you on your path to greatness.
In this book you will learn:
* The skills and characteristics of great ScrumMasters
* How to generate, maintain and increase engagement from the team
* How to increase the effectiveness of the Scrum meetings, such as retrospectives and daily scrums.
* How to foster a more creative and collaborative team
* How to increase the performance of the team
* How to know when you are a successful ScrumMaster
Scrum Mastery is for practicing ScrumMasters who want to develop themselves into a great servant-leader capable of taking their teams beyond simple process compliance.
Author: Geoff Watts
We live in a world that is broken. For those who believe that there must be a more agile and efficient way for people to get things done, here from Scrum pioneer Jeff Sutherland is a brilliantly discursive, thought-provoking book about the leadership and management process that is changing the way we live.
In the future, historians may look back on human progress and draw a sharp line designating “before Scrum” and “after Scrum.” Scrum is that ground-breaking. It already drives most of the world’s top technology companies. And now it’s starting to spread to every domain where leaders wrestle with complex projects.
If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling – explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago.
The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that would have global impact.
In this book you’ll journey to Scrum’s front lines where Jeff’s system of deep accountability, team interaction, and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World, and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores.
Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology, devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Authors: Jeff Sutherland, JJ Sutherland
In Agile Product Management with Scrum, leading Scrum consultant Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. He describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating the minimal marketable product, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team.
Benefitting from Pichler’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management and how to avoid and overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face.
Coverage includes
- Understanding the product owner’s role: what product owners do, how they do it, and the surprising implications
- Envisioning the product: creating a compelling product vision to galvanize and guide the team and stakeholders
- Grooming the product backlog: managing the product backlog effectively even for the most complex products
- Planning the release: bringing clarity to scheduling, budgeting, and functionality decisions
- Collaborating in sprint meetings: understanding the product owner’s role in sprint meetings, including the dos and don’ts
- Transitioning into product ownership: succeeding as a product owner and establishing the role in the enterprise
This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner, or expects to do so, as well as executives and coaches interested in establishing agile product management.
Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love
Author: Roman Pichler
Everyone knows that most new products fail and that building great products is hard. The Lean Product Playbook provides clear, step-by-step guidance to help you create successful products.
Lean Startup has contributed valuable ideas about product development and generated lots of excitement. But despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they lack specific guidance on what to do and how to do it.
If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to create winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to:
- Determine your target customers
- Identify underserved customer needs
- Create a winning product strategy
- Define your minimum viable product (MVP)
- Design your MVP prototype
- Test your MVP with customers
- Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit
This book includes two detailed, end-to-end case studies to drive home the concepts. It also describes how to build your product using Agile development and how to use analytics to optimize your product and business.
Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts, and anyone passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback
Author: Dan Olson
Aspiring digital businesses need overall IT agility, not just development team agility. In Agile IT Organization Design , IT management consultant and ThoughtWorks veteran Sriram Narayan shows how to infuse agility throughout your organization. Drawing on more than fifteen years’ experience working with enterprise clients in IT-intensive industries, he introduces an agile approach to “Business–IT Effectiveness” that is as practical as it is valuable.
The author shows how structural, political, operational, and cultural facets of organization design influence overall IT agility—and how you can promote better collaboration across diverse functions, from sales and marketing to product development, and engineering to IT operations. Through real examples, he helps you evaluate and improve organization designs that enhance autonomy, mastery, and purpose: the key ingredients for a highly motivated workforce.
You’ll find “close range” coverage of team design, accountability, alignment, project finance, tooling, metrics, organizational norms, communication, and culture. For each, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of where your organization stands, and clear direction for making improvements. Ready to optimize the performance of your IT organization or digital business? Here are practical solutions for the long term, and for right now.
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Govern for value over predictability
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Organize for responsiveness, not lowest cost
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Clarify accountability for outcomes and for decisions along the way
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Strengthen the alignment of autonomous teams
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Move beyond project teams to capability teams
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Break down tool-induced silos
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Choose financial practices that are free of harmful side effects
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Create and retain great teams despite today’s “talent crunch”
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Reform metrics to promote (not prevent) agility
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Evolve culture through improvements to structure, practices, and leadership—and careful, deliberate interventions
Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery
Author: Sriram Narayan
From Sharon L. Bowman, the author of the best-selling The Ten-Minute Trainer, comes the dynamic new book, Training from the BACK of the Room! This innovative resource introduces 65 training strategies that are guaranteed to deliver outstanding training results no matter what the topic, group, or learning environment may be. Now, trainers can replace the traditional “Trainers talk; learners listen” paradigm with a radical new model for designing and delivering instruction: “When learners talk and teach, they learn.”
The author’s four-step instructional design and delivery process involves learners every step of the way. Designed to be user-friendly, Training from the BACK of the Room! is filled with definitions, descriptions, and practical training strategies for each of the 4 Cs:
Connections—Fifteen opening activities that connect learners to the topic, to each other, and to what they want and need to learn.
Concepts—Twenty strategies that engage and involve learners during the lecture or “direct instruction” training segment.
Concrete Practice—Fifteen strategies in which learners actively review content and practice skills.
Conclusions—Fifteen learner-led summaries, evaluations, and celebration activities.
In addition, the book offers “nice-to-know” information that will add to what you have learned: the secret about adult learning theory, a new way to write learning outcomes, The World Cafe, tips for interactive e-learning, and other useful resources to expand your learning adventure.
Training From the Back of the Room!: 65 Ways to Step Aside and Let Them Learn
Author: Sharon L. Bowman
Captured for the first time in print, the SAFe body of knowledge is now available as a handy desktop reference to help you accomplish your mission of building better software and systems. Inside, you’ll find complete coverage of what has, until now, only been available online at scaledagileframework.com. The SAFe knowledge base was developed from real-world field experience and provides proven success patterns for implementing Lean-Agile software and systems development at enterprise scale. This book provides comprehensive guidance for work at the enterprise Portfolio, Value Stream, Program, and Team levels, including the various roles, activities, and artifacts that constitute the Framework, along with the foundational elements of values, mindset, principles, and practices.
Education & Training Key to Success
The practice of SAFe is spreading rapidly throughout the world. The majority of Fortune 100 U.S. companies have certified SAFe practitioners and consultants, as do an increasing percentage of the Global 1000 enterprises. Case study results–visit scaledagileframework.com/case-studies–typically include:
- 20—50% increase in productivity
- 50%+ increases in quality
- 30—75% faster time to market
- Measurable increases in employee engagement and job satisfaction
With results like these, the demand from enterprises seeking SAFe expertise is accelerating at a dramatic rate. Successful implementations may vary in context, but share a common attribute: a workforce well trained and educated in SAFe practices. This book–along with authorized training and certification–will help you understand how to maximize the value of your role within a SAFe organization. The result is greater alignment, visibility, improved performance throughout the enterprise, and ultimately better outcomes for the business.
SAFe® 4.0 Reference Guide: Scaled Agile Framework® for Lean Software and Systems Engineering
Author: Dean Leffingwell
If you want to understand how to lead a Continuous Delivery or DevOps transformation in your company, there’s no better book than this. Concise, practical, and based on hard-won executive experience, this book is essential reading for every IT executive. (Jez Humble, VP, Chef)
This book goes beyond theory and deeply into reality-based application. (Greg Nicastro, EVP Product Development and SaaS Operations, Veracode)
It’s long past the time when executives who are looking for better performance from software development can expect an “Agile transformation” to solve their problems. Today’s wise executive will know enough about the underlying principles of software systems to ask the right questions and make sure that their organization is solving the right problems. That’s where this book comes in—it contains just enough theory to inform executives about critical issues and just enough detail to clarify what’s important and why. (Mary Poppendieck, Author of The Lean Mindset and the Lean Software Development series)
Leading the Transformation is a critical asset for any leadership in a large development environment seeking to transform the organization from the swamp of restriction to the freeway of efficient delivery. The book provides real-life data and solid advice for any leader embarking on or in the middle of an enterprise delivery transformation. (Lance Sleeper, Senior Manager of Operations, American Airlines)
Before you undertake a major change in your development process, you want to learn from people who have gone before you. Gary and Tommy draw on their experience to prepare you on how to plan and what to expect as you roll out Agile/DevOps methodology in your enterprise. Reading this book, I learnt valuable lessons on planning a scaled-out Agile transformation and what signposts to look for along the way as we embarked on the transformation journey at Cisco. (Vinod Peris, VP Engineering, Routing & Optical, Cisco)
Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale
Authors: Gary Gruver, Tommy Mouser
December 2016
Are you getting all that you hoped and expected from your Agile software development process? If not, it might be because your product governance processes are in conflict. As a director of a Program Management Office I’ve seen that by making a few simple but critical changes to your process you will reduce the time wasted on products that will never get built, make better product choices, and enjoy better relationships between your managers and software development teams. After reading Succeeding with Agile Governance, you will know the importance of more Agile-friendly approaches to governance and will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to implement effective Agile governance. You will know to:
- Plan using only the appropriate level of data available, elaborate, and change the plan as assumptions change.
- Be disciplined about when and how to make decisions.
- Separate accountability for solutions and requirements from accountability for the market problems and business needs.
Succeeding with Agile Governance: The Agile PMO
Author: Paul Osborn
Projects will soon be managed with a hybrid of Agile and traditional Waterfall processes. This highly instructive guide covers what Agile is, and how and when it is appropriate to blend it into your projects. Agile Practices for Waterfall Projects will help new and experienced project managers, stakeholders, and students proactively prepare for and ensure their future success. It also explains all the terms and concepts contained in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) exam.
Key Features:
–Presents specific, workable methods to add Agile to your projects while preserving your investment of time and development in traditional Waterfall processes
–Uses interactive tools to help readers understand, experience, and discover techniques to blend Agile with Waterfall processes in the right amount for each project
–Describes how to work with the major Agile methodology teams, and ways to merge the teams, reports, documents, metrics, tools, and meetings between Agile and Waterfall teams
–WAV offers a downloadable Agile Evaluator, Agile Evaluator Checklist, Agile Evaluator Sample Results, Planning Poker Cards, Story Card Templates, and a PMI-ACP Practice Exam
Agile Practices for Waterfall Projects: Shifting Processes for Competitive Advantage
Author: Barbee Davis
As contrary as it sounds, “planning” — as we traditionally understand the term–can be the worst thing a company can do. Consider that volatile weather events disrupt trusted supply chains, markets, and promised delivery schedules. Ever-shifting geo-political tensions, as well as internal political upheaval within U.S. and global governments, derail long-planned new ventures. Technology failures block opportunities. Competitors suddenly change their product or release date; your team cannot meet the pace of innovations in your market niche, leaving you sidelined. There are myriad ways in the current business environment for a company’s well-considered business plans to go awry. Most business schools continue to prepare managers to be effective in stable and predictable environments, conditions that, if they ever existed at all, are long gone.
The Agility Shift shows business leaders exactly how to make the radical mindset and strategy shift necessary to create an agile, entrepreneurial organization that can innovate and thrive in complex, ever-changing contexts. As author Pamela Meyer explains, there is much more involved than a reconfiguration of the org chart and job descriptions. It requires relinquishing the illusion of control at the very foundation of most management training and business practice. Despite most leaders’ approaches, “Agility is not simply accelerated planning.” Unlike many agility books on the market, The Agility Shift provides specific, actionable strategies and tactics for leaders at all levels of the organization to put into practice immediately to improve agility and achieve results.
Agility Shift: Creating Agile and Effective Leaders, Teams, and Organizations
Author: Pamela Meyer
Ethan, the newly appointed Transformation Team Leader at VeraComm Systems—a large product development organization—finds himself in the middle of violent action: the company has failed to cope with the increasing complexities of building competitive communications solutions and is rapidly losing market share. Caught between a traditional approach to program and portfolio management, and half-baked Agile methods at the team level, he struggles to help his company find a way out. Faced with a nearly impossible quest, he attends a conference desperately seeking a solution. There he finds a glimpse of hope—a method that applies the notion of Agility at a much higher scale. Inspired by this discovery, Ethan charges into action, launching the rollout of a new method at his company. But in no time, he runs into a brick wall which puts the rollout, and his own career, in grave danger. He comes to realize that the basic culture and his enterprise’s way of thinking are its biggest impediments to success. His quest leads him to understand that his own mindset is also part of the problem….
The reader will be pulled into the exciting action unfolding as Ethan leads his organization towards enterprise agility. Fictional, but based on a broad range of real-life implementations, this novel by Alex Yakyma provides a war chest of techniques and tools to support large-scale rollouts of Lean and Agile methods.
The Rollout: A Novel about Leadership and Building a Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFe®
Author: Alex Yakyma
This book will show you how by using Agile Methods in you Projects you will not have to worry about the delays in the deliverance of your projects because all the work is done is iterations and among these iterations, testing of the product is conducted due to which if any bugs are found, they are removed immediately and if the stakeholder demands any change, it can be provided to him.
This book is about the Agile Project Management. It is basically the guide for beginners. Those who have no or very little idea about what Agile is and how it is beneficial for your Projects, can take a lot of help from this book. Most of the technical words and a bit of history is mentioned in easy and compatible words.
What Scrum, Sprint and Agile is, how Agile is better than the Traditional Project Method, what are the top Software of Project Management with pros and cons of some and what Agile Manifesto is on the basis of which this whole Agile is developed and what is the framework on which Agile Methods can be used, all are discussed in this guide.
Here is a preview of what you’ll learn:
1.Introduction to Agile and Scrum
2.Agile versus Traditional Project Management
3.Agile Manifesto
4.Top Agile Management Software
5.Getting Started by Implementing Scrum
Agile Project Management: The Ultimate Guide To Agile Project Management And Software Development – Plus Tips & Tricks For Implementing Scrum!
Author: Henry Hayes
In understanding methodologies and agile project management, we look at the different techniques in which you can successfully develop management skills. As you know, it is quite important to adopt a multifaceted approach when it comes to management, to get your job done in a facile manner.
Agile methodology is a multifaceted approach that finds its application in many different fields and can be considered an umbrella concept. Right from engineering to IT to business management, there are many areas where one can effectively apply the ideologies of agile management. Once you go through the book, you will understand how easy it is for you to adopt and utilize it to enhance your business.
The agile management technique focuses on four main aspects, namely – effective communication with clients/parties, delivering a work application, collaborating with clients and changing up the scope of work.
All of these need to be controlled and managed in order to enhance productivity. That is exactly where this book comes into play.
In the course of this book, you will learn how to:
- Understanding the iterative learning process
- Learning about the agile software development techniques
- The scope of management
- Meaning and features of agile manifesto
- Dynamic system development model and its applications
- The phases of the Atern project
- Understanding of the scrum theory
- Sprint reviews and sprint retrospectives
- Service designs and transitions
- Service operations
- Lean development principles
- Operational level management techniques
- Steps to enhance focus
Agile management basically focuses on enhancing communication within the organizational structure to ensure that you remain with free flowing ideologies. It is a good way to increase your productivity while managing your work environment. The book focuses on understanding each and every element by breaking it down to the simplest form. The concepts are explained in such a way that they allow you to implement them in your work life. You can go through the concepts in detail to understand each and every aspect of it. There is no limit to its application and you can mold it into any shape or form of your choice. You can pass a copy of the book to all your employees so that they can understand what it takes to partake in agile management of business. You can also consider holding a seminar or a book reading session where everybody can interpret their ideologies in their own way.
Using the information provided in the book, you can implement agile management in your day-to-day life; whether it is work or personal life. So what are you waiting for – start reading right away!
Agile Project Management: A Complete Beginner’s Guide To Agile Project Management
Authors: Marcus Ries, Diana Summers
Improvisation. The mere mention of the word makes many people quake with fear at the prospect of chaos and uncertainty. The fact is, though, human beings are improvising almost every minute of their lives it is more natural, and more filled with possibility, than you might imagine.
On stage, improvisational actors use simple rules, collaborative principles, and game constraints to build unscripted yet intriguing storylines. This book explores how those same simple rules and principles can help agile teams collaborate more effectively and how purposefully working within constraints can unlock creativity.
Inside, you ll find over 50 techniques and improv games tailored for agile teams, complete with step-by-step instructions. These games are based on five different principles of improvisational theatre:
SAFETY: how accepting failure is essential to discovery
SPONTANEITY: how to increase the flow of ideas
STORYTELLING: how narratives help teams relate to their customers and end users
STATUS: how adjusting personal behaviour can encourage collaboration
SENSITIVITY: how to become more fully engaged with fellow team members
Improv-ing Agile Teams: Using Constraints to Unlock Creativity
Author: Paul Goddard
This first-ever interactive Agile Adventure is the gripping tale of an experienced team struggling with agile adoption. In this unique mashup of a business novel written in the gamebook format, you’ll overcome common yet daunting challenges that come from using agile methods. As Jim, the agile coach, you’ll learn to apply a range of thinking tools and techniques to real-life problems faced by teams and organizations. Find out what really works and what fails miserably from the consequences of your choices. And, unlike in the real world, if at first you don’t succeed, you can make different choices until you get things right.
Management is ready to disband your new agile team and outsource your project. Can you save The Dream Team?
The Dream Team started their journey 18 months ago. Since then, life has become a nightmare. Progress has ground to a halt. Morale is low. Quality has become taboo. You have five days to figure out how to get the team back on track. There will be conflict and maybe tears. One thing is for sure: there will be plenty of tough decisions to make.
Inspired by a classic gamebook series, this fun and interactive story has eight different endings designed to enrich and put your agile development knowledge and experience to the test. Packed with familiar scenarios an agile team faces every day, The Dream Team Nightmare offers you the chance to see what would happen if you could do things differently so you can change the way you do things for real with confidence.
Combining practical team-building exercises with effective facilitation and Systems Thinking, by the end of the book you’ll be ready to rescue projects in trouble, and get new projects off to a better start.
The Dream Team Nightmare: Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques
Author: Portia Tung
