Resources
Books We Recommend: Ecclesiastes xii. 12. "Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."
For people about to take the CSM (Scrum) course, we recommend the following:
The Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Free and electronic. And short.
Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber.
Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg.
The Power of Scrum by Jeff Sutherland, Rini van Solingen, and Eelco Rustenburg. The Kindle version is inexpensive. Fairly short. From a manager's viewpoint. And in the form of a novel (novella) or story.
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Below are our first 5 general recommendations. For additional recommendations, see below.
Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber.
Largely in the form of stories (patterns), with lessons learned. Many people love this way of learning. The Scrum rules at the end are a nice distillation.
Agile Software Development with SCRUM, by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle. This book takes a different approach to explaining Scrum, which other types of people will like.
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series), by Mike Cohn. Great book on using user stories, and other topics related to Scrum and XP.
Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn. Another great book on this subject. And Mike adds lots of tips about how to make a project run better.
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith. Sometimes you run into a person who thinks individuals are the key to everything. This book does many things, one of which is provide a bunch of evidence that teams are actually smarter than one individual. But then, your mother told you that two heads are better than one.
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The Enterprise and Scrum,
by Ken Schwaber. The focus here is on adoption of Scrum (and Agile
more broadly) by the enterprise, and the issues that naturally
arise. Includes some discussion of Scrum itself, but that is covered
in more depth in the others 2 books.
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. They explain agile from a lean perspective.
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition), by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres. This is one of the definitive
books on XP.
Implementing Lean Software Development:
From Concept to Cash, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Their
second book.
Agile Project Management: Creating
Innovative Products
, by Jim Highsmith. Explains Agile more from a
project manager's perspective.
Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide, by Craig
Larman. This book provides a good overview of several of the key
strands of agile, including Scrum, XP and others.
Extreme Programming Installed,
by Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, and Chet Hendrickson. Ron makes XP
work. And a great sense of humor. Practical.
Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews, by Norman Kerth. Lots of good insights about doing retrospectives, which, among other things enable continuous improvement. See his website.
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. Esther and Diana have great experience. Excellent advice.
Leading with the Heart, by Mike Krzyzewski. Teams are similar no matter which game they are playing. Coach K is famous as perhaps the best coach in college basketball. Perhaps you can learn to be as good a coach in your field.
A Sense of Urgency by John Kotter. About change in medium to large firms. Kotter is the expert.
Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising. Also about changing people and organizations. Maybe more practical than Kotter's book.
Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno. A great book for managers. Sounds like non-aotomobile people would not like it, but it is a great read, very practical. And short.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick Brooks. A classic. Still.
Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (Robert C. Martin Series) by Mugridge and Cunningham. We gotta get the testing better. FIT is a great frameowrk for that, although not the only one.
Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) by Duvall, Matyas, and Glover.
Test Driven Development: By Example
(Addison-Wesley Signature Series)
Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C. Martin Series) by Michael Feathers. Excellent book for an extremely common, and big, problem.
The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation by Nonaka and Takeuchi.
Software by Numbers: Low-Risk, High-Return Development by Mark Denne and Jane Cleland-Huang.
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) by Mike Cohn.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni.
The Power of a Positive No by William Ury. We have to learn to be more honest in our work. Here is one good idea in that direction.
Radical Project Management by Rob Thomsett.
Pair Programming Illuminated by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler.
Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management ed. Takeuchi and Nonaka. Wow. Many wonderful ideas here. Practical ideas.
Succeeding With Agile by Mike Cohn. Mike uses his great experience to propose practical ways to help your firm reach greater success with Scrum.
Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka.
Extreme Project Management by Doug DeCarlo.
Software Project Management by Walker Royce. His father, Winston Royce, wrote the definite paper on Waterfall in 1970. While he praises his father, he moves on to an iterative and incremental approach. Some good ideas, to Unified Process-like and too heavy for my tastes, but many good ideas.
Extreme Programming: Pocket Guide by chromatic.
The Leader's Guide to Radical Management by Steve Denning. Excellent!
Drive by Daniel Pink. About motivation. These basics are well-known. He adds some new data and new examples. Mainly and very importantly, he reminds us. I remember about 7 times a day and forget only about 2 times a day now.
Managing Agile Projects by Sanjiv Augustine.
Agile Portfolio Management by Jochen Krebs.
The Project 50 by Tom Peters.
For other books we recommend, see here:
Jeff Sutherland's Recommended Reading
