AGILE BOOKS

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.

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 for Software Development Managers, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. They explain agile from a lean perspective.

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.

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.

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.

Extreme Programming Installed , by Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, and Chet Hendrickson. Ron makes XP work. And a great sense of humor. Practical.

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 headsarebetterhanone.

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, listed above.

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.

AGILE SITES

Ken Schwaber’s site – An excellent source from the co-creator of Scrum.

Jeff Sutherland’s site – Also an excellent source, from the other co-creator of Scrum. In a blog format.

Agile Alliance – The site where the many strands of Agile come together.

Scrum Alliance – The site for Certified ScrumMasters.

Mike Cohn’s site – This site has a lot of excellent, practical advice. Very down to earth.

Ron Jeffries' site – This is a great site for XP and related Agile advice.

WikiWikiWeb – This is the site of the original wiki. Wikis were invented by Ward Cunningham. He and and now others have created this site. Ward remains one of the three key proponents of XP. The site is known as WikiWikiWeb or Ward’s Wiki.

Ward’s Wiki – This is the page on Ward’s Wiki where Ward Cunningham (I think) provides his roadmap to XP. Do look around the wiki. Lots of interesting stuff.

About Wikis – Well, if you must know more about wikis, start here.

Wikipedia site – This is a site you probably heard about before you knew what a wiki was. Pretty darn good encyclopedia. Great example of a wiki.

Scrum Development Yahoo Group – Where lots of good discussion goes on. You will find posts from the best in the business. Even us.

Agile Advice – Here is a blog, mainly from Mishkin Berteig, with lots of good advice about, well, agile.

Jim Highsmith – Jim Highsmith is one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto. Great thinking about Agile and running projects.

Sanjiv Augustine – Sanjiv has written a good book about Agile Project Management. This is his site.

Agile Manifesto – Did we mention that earlier? Yes, and on a link you can also see the Agile Principles, and a description of how the manifesto (not my favorite word) came to be written. We are grateful for the courage of these pioneers.

Martin Fowler – Martin Fowler is a very bright guy, with much to say. This is a link to his web article on "the new methodology" (namely, agile). Recently updated. Look around also.

The Poppendiecks – Mary and Tom Poppendieck are leaders in Lean Software Development, which some might call a flavor of agile. Brings in many of the ideas of Lean, Lean Manufacturing, and the Toyota Production System. While developed fairly independently of agile, Lean is remarkably similar. Gives you new insights into why agile works.

Norm Kerth – This man has some great insights on Retrospectives. Here is his Prime Directive.

Scrum Reference Card – There are several like this. This one’s pretty good.

William Wake – He has some great information and suggestions. I like his Scrum on one page, for example. He has many other useful ideas.

Brian Marick – Brian has great ideas about testing on an agile project. This is his site.

Rachel Davies – This is Rachel Davies blog. You will find her comments wise and humane.

Esther Derby – Esther has excellent ideas about making teams more effective and about Agile Retrospectives. This is her blog.

Diana Larsen – Diana has wonderful ideas about making teams more effective, and, again, about Agile Retrospectives. Esther and Diana often work together. This is her blog, called Partnership & Possibilities.

LEAN and SIX SIGMA

i Six Sigma – Information on the Six Sigma methodology.

Lean Enterprise Institute - Home for Womack and Jones.

Lean Thinking . James Womack and Daniel Jones. Book. Great way to learn about Lean. Lean comes to us from Lean Manufacturing, but obviously it has many similarities to Agile. Just getting the key concepts of waste, flow and pull can be a great help in doing better projects.

If you have suggestions for other sites, books, or resources to add to this page, please email them to us by clicking here. Or by sending an email to:
jhlittle@kittyhawkconsulting.com

Thanks!