Books with the word «Agile» in their titles began to appear on the shelves of IT experts and other industries' professionals after 2001. The term was used during the declaration of the Agile Software Development Manifesto. Agile describes a software development methodology that is characterized by short life cycles leading to frequent product releases.
Today this iterative or incremental method affects various aspects of development and business including project management. What are the best sources to learn Agile? This post covers 10 powerful books that may enhance the skills of project managers and their teams.
What was the latest book on Agile methodology or project management you've read?
...well, how many seconds have passed in thoughts? :)
Shame on you!) The only excuse for you may be connected with your preferences to attend industry conferences, watch video tutorials, listen to professional podcasts, dive into Agile project management books pdf or use other alternative of project management sources.
Without jokes, people who involved in projects should constantly read and enrich their knowledge base. For a project manager, a good book is a key to professional growth and the team's success.
Actually, it has never been so easy as now to share professional insights, experience and outstanding ideas with the whole world throughout useful content. At the same time, it’s rather challenging to find information that is truly useful among all the empty chatter.
You may find dozens of books on Agile project management with trivial thoughts and truths been rewritten a hundred times. Here we combine the books you should read if you want to learn more about the Agile way of running projects and what exactly you’ll learn from them.
Best Agile project management books
The books about Agile project management outline that project managers continue to be essential in the effective completion of any type of project.
Agile values more the process, a working product, customer collaboration and responding to changes. Reading professional literature you'll be able to apply these principles and become a real guru of Agile project management.
Agile Project Management for Dummies
Author: Mark C. Layton
The title of the book may make you think of the author’s frivolous attitude, however a PMP and Certified Scrum Trainer, Mark Layton proposes fascinating stories and countless practical principles you’ll find really useful.
The book has recently celebrated its 7 years old, and it's still relevant and popular among Agile project managers. Reading this book, you' ll get an informative guide about agile project management approaches, powerfull online and offline tools, and techniques to help develop and implement winning software packages.
You'll quickly become knowledgeable when to apply particular techniques and empower the entire team to complete the project effectively.
Agile Project Management for Dummies will definitely enhance the knowledge base and skills of project managers, project team members, and all project stakeholders. It'll be useful for any regular person who is involved in projects (traditional or Agile-focused) in a business or organizational environment.
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products
Author: Dan Olsen
Many companies all over the world have successfully adopted Lean thinking. However, some teams run into challenges trying to apply Lean as they feel lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing.
This book can be an excellent foundation if you’re just starting your business. The author describes how to make product development simple and logical. The book will help you avoid hundreds of common pitfalls and challenges.
In order to ensure better customer targeting, you should clearly define the needs of your potential clients. This idea is strongly emphasized by Olsen. In this book, you'll also find the explanation of the MVP concept that favors in bringing your product to market fast.
Whether you work at a startup or a global company, this book will help you to improve your chances of building successful products.
The Lean Startup
Author: Eric Ries
If you are looking for more information about Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to product development, this book is right for you.
The Lean Startup will be a great accompaniment on your way to Agile. This book teaches how to identify the product’s target market and create your business around the demands of potential clients.
The author explains how to create a new brand and stay innovative, how to apply the original Lean methodology — the precursor of Agile. Eric Reis claims that the Lean Startup approach boosts the success of companies that are capital efficient and leverage human creativity more effectively.
Eric introduced his book and could not imagine that it would perform like the Agile bible. If you are a beginner in Agile project management or an experienced specialist, you should definitely read it.
The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility
Authors: Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick
This fundamental book will be especially helpful for project managers experienced in traditional approaches and processes transition to Agile methods.
This affordable book gives more than just an introduction to a canonical business management technique. Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick demonstrate the clear difference between traditionally plan-driven methods and vision-driven Agile processes.
The authors as the veteran of project management and PMI-certified PMPs share their knowledge about how PMPs can painlessly transition to the new Agile environment using familiar PMBOK Guide language.
The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility will be an excellent artifact in the collection of books of a project manager in a software development environment who are transitioning from traditional to Agile methods.
Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition
Author: Lyssa Adkins
Any Agile coach, Scrum master, and a project manager strive to become outstanding at Agile, create winning products and deliver innovations and excellence. This is quite a challenging role that requires professional skills and understanding of when to step in and when to step back.
The author provides her readers with the insights they need to adopt the new mindset and guide teams to extraordinary performance.
This book gives a deep view of the Agile coach's role, discovers what works and what doesn’t, and teaches how to adapt powerful project management software.
This book gives project leaders guidance and advice not only in understanding their new role but also in enabling the teams to self-organize and take new responsibilities that previously were handled by project managers.
Project Management the Agile Way: Making it Work in the Enterprise
Author: John Goodpasture
This book written by John Goodpasture is a helpful resource that contains fresh and relevant Agile principles that help teams to get back in track and avoid bending the rules before mastering them.
Project Management the Agile Way proposes readers a clear explanation of different Agile methods and the ways to apply them in projects within a company.
The book guides project managers about how to choose the right Agile practices and integrate them for particular project requirements. You'll dive deep into the evolution of Agile methods, explanation of how to scale it for enterprise projects, and recognizing possible Agile alternatives.
This book will be also useful for all team members such as business analysts, product managers, developers, testers, or business analysts or other employees who need to understand the relationships existing in a more dynamic working environment.
Scrum: The Art Of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time
Author: Jeff Sutherland
The book gives a full understanding of Scrum background and share interesting facts and cases. It can be a nice gift for specialists who already studies and practices Agile for a long time.
“The art of doing twice the work in half the time” will be useful for any leader, and it addresses Scrum from a management standpoint and shows its value.
It will help you to achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing an innovative technology or building a foundation for your family.
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Author: Jessica Livingston
Jessica Livingston has written her masterpiece for people looking to start their own company and those who have tough times with their businesses.
Founders at Work can be read before or after any book, mentioned in this post — it will be a great independent addition to your knowledge luggage.
The author shares a collection of interviews with the founders of famous technology companies. You'll read about their paths to success from the very beginning.
This book can not be considered as the direct guideline on how to build your own Agile project management success but it may start an invigorating aggregate of inspiring information for you.
«Founders at work: Stories of startups' early days» will be useful for innovation managers, entrepreneurs, or anyone fascinated by the management chemistry.
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Authors: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen
This amazing book provides readers with proven tools and techniques to solve any challenge that comes during Agile software development.
These challenges are brought forward in retrospective sessions. The book describes the necessity of frequent retrospectives in increments and iterations rather than at the end of the project.
The authors share their professional experience of helping software companies to reach their potential. You'll also learn how to use the experience of your team continually throughout the life of the project.
A well-run project retrospective helps software development teams examine what went right ort wrong on a project. This book will inspire and motivate all the team.
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
Author: Mike Cohn
Developing user stories that clearly define the functionality of the product from the end-user perspective is an essential part of Agile project management. This book centers right on this subject.
Mike Cohn explains the complete lifecycle of user stories and describes the processes of user roles identification, brainstorming, prioritization, development, management, and testing.
The book teaches how to make a great user story, and be able to understand what makes a bad one.
Автор: Pavel_Ku
