Agile Resources

Agile/Scrum Books
• Scrum and XP From the Trenches, Ken Schwaber & Mike Beedle. Also
available as a downloadable PDF . This is the book I tell newcomers to Scrum,
“If you’re gonna read only one Scrum book, make it this one.” Experiential
rather than overiew-based.
• Essential Scrum by Kenny Rubin. A fantastic overview of scrum. Much more
detail/overview oriented than Scrum & XP from the trenches, with tons of
good information and lots of helpful graphics.
• The Scrum Field Guide by Mitch Lacey. Mitch took the idea from the book
"What to expect when you're expecting", and applied it to scrum. Each
chapter has great advice on what to expect when you move to scrum, the
concepts behind the right approach, and a case study.
• Agile Software Development with Scrum, Ken Schwaber & Mike Beedle. The
original Scrum book. Good, clear overview of the practices and principles of
Scrum. It is somewhat out-of-date now, as Scrum has progressed since the
book was written, but it is still a valuable read
• Succeeding with Agile , Mike Cohn . This book provides strategies for rolling
out agile across groups and organizations
• Agile Testing , Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory . Fantastic book that covers
testing in an agile world
• User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn . This clear and simple book covers the
aspects of writing, estimating, prioritizing and committing to product
requirements. Essential reading for Product Owners.
• Agile Estimating and Planning, Mike Cohn . What are story points again? Why
do we use them and not estimated hours? This book will refresh you on these
topics and help you become good at estimation and release planning.
• Coaching Agile Teams , Lyssa Adkins . If you’re a scrum master, read this
book. Provides lots of tools and ways to think about being a great servant
leader and agile change agent for your team
• The Lean Startup, Eric Ries . If you are a product owner, read this book.
Provides a fantastic, scientific approach to the business side of agile – what
are our key assumptions about what customers want, what will cause them to
purchase, and how do we validate those assumptions, pivot if we are wrong,
etc.
• Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders, Jurgen
Appelo . What do managers do if they’re not doing command and control
management?
• Agile Retrospectives, Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
• Kanban and Scrum - Making the most of bot, Henrik Kniberg and Mattias
Skarin:h . In the style of Scrum and XP from the Trenches, this book is ultra-
practical and useful without becoming a “guide for dummies.” Available as a
print book and downloadable pdf.
 • Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Kent Beck . One of the
first Agile books. Focuses mainly (but not solely) on the engineering
practices, and supplies good overall context for creating an Agile organization.
• Innovative Exploration, Menlo Innovations Team . A picture book about how
Menlo Innovations does XP (really, truly, fully). Great for showing people
what it should look like and how it should work when done well.

Skills for Scrum Masters

• The Road from Project Manager to Agile Coach, Lyssa Adkins, in two parts.
Part two here
• A Scrum Master's Checklist, Michael James
• Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward
Success in Work and, Life, Laura Whitworth, et. al. . Coaching skills for agile
coaches,such as powerful questions, are taught in this book. It’s fantastic,
and you can get a good start using this book, but I did not get good at the
skills (and, in fact, misunderstood several of them) until I attended the
classes that teach these skills.
• Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills, Tony
Stoltzfus .

This is the full-of-easy-and-useful-stuff book that David and Allison love.
• Agile Coaching, Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley .A very practical and useful
guide for coaching teams. Wonderful for new agile coaches.
• Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, J, Richard
Hackman . While not an agile book per-se, all of the ideas in this one are
applicable to coaching agile teams. For example, need help convincing a
product owner to create a compelling vision? This book helps you explain
why that’s so important.
• Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott . Because you have to have a lot of fierce
conversations as an agile coach. Might as well get good at them.
• Collaboration Explained, Jean Tabaka . Great book for agile coaches about
being a good facilitator. Check out the section with starter agendas for sprint
planning and other agile meetings. To help you create retrospectives that
have people get up from the conference room table and come up with real
insights. My copy of this has stickies all over it and coffee stains and worn out
pages. That’s how much I use it.

Getting Your Head into The Agile Leadership Mind-set

• Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World,
Margaret J. Wheatley . Great material on why the mechanistic view of the
workforce no longer works. What worked for me: start with Chapter 8 then go
back to the heavier science at the beginning.
• The Answer to How is Yes, Peter Block . A great book for helping your
managers (and you) get past the “how do we do it” and into the “why should
we do it.”
• Re-imagine\! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, Tom Peters This book is
as visually stunning as its words are stunning. It should get you re-imagining
in no time.
 • Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations and
Society, Peter Senge and others This one is a little academic, but if you like
that (or can wade through it) the payoff is big. Amazing insights that cause
me to say “oh! so that’s why that happens in companies” happened
frequently. Now, months later, I find that I reference this book all the time.
• Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating
Change, Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs , The leaders we need now are not
heroes, they are synergists who bring the best out in everyone (including
themselves). This book gives you a clear model of the levels of leadership in
play now and where we are going with the new breeds of leadership (and why
we must).
• The Builder’s Manifesto, Umar Haque. It’s Buildership, not Leadership that’s
needed today.

Highly Recommended Books from Allied Disciplines

• Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us, Dan Pink. What
motivates people, really (hint: it’s not raises or public embarrassment). For a
short burst of this book in 15 minutes, see the TED talk on The Surprising
Science of Motivation
• The Anatomy of Peace, The Arbinger Institute . For helping you turn the ratio
around so that you are spending much more time helping things go right
rather than dealing with things that are going wrong. Plus, great ways to get
to the heart of conflict on your teams (and within yourself)
• Leadership and Self-Deception, The Arbinger Institute. Essential reading for
any manager, but especially for Agile Coaches.
• Artful Making, Lee Devin & Rob Austin. This is an excellent book that explores
how methods used in creative fields such as theatre can be applied to
managing knowledge-based projects.
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software , Steven
Johnson. Why agile teams are more like ecosystems than machines is
explained with lots of examples in this book.
• Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency, Tom
DeMarco. This book is inspiring and surprising; it is like a whack to the side of
the head.
• Teamwork is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done While Sharing
Responsibility, Christopher Avery . This is a must-have book for Agile team
members. It contains tests and tools to help you become the kind of team
member that creates astonishing results.

Online resources
• Scrum Guide. This guide is used as the reference for what *is* and *is not*
Scrum.
• What is agile and Scrum, Mike Cohn Agile and Scrum described
• InfoQ interview with Jeff Sutherland: Scrum and Not Scrum -- with video.
• Running Tested Features and Technical Debt, Ron Jeffries
Agile Contracts
• Agile Contracts: Andreas Opelt and Boris Gloger
• http://www.agilecontracts.org/
• https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/sessions/agile-contracts-blast-off-to-
the-zone-of-collaborative-systems-building/
• https://www.scaledagileframework.com/agile-contracts/

Agile Statistics
• The Business Value of Agile Software Methods, David Rico . This book gives
you all the numbers and formulas you could possibly want on why Agile
methods produce more value than other ways of working.

Product Owner Material

• Innovation Games, Luke Hohmann . For when the product owner is just
“winging it” and has no clue what we should really build. These are a
collection of serious games that tap into what customers, vendors, partners,
etc really want and will really buy.
• Agile Project Management - Creating Innovative Products, Jim Highsmith .
Good overview of Agile approaches to project management. This is more
"managerial" than I like, personally, but offers some good ideas for working
with customers.

Web Sites and Blogs Full of Useful Posts

• The Scrum Alliance site . Contribute your experiences of using Scrum here
• The Agile Alliance site, for all things Agile.
• The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles.