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Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership by David Bradford and Allan Cohen - David and Allan follow up their award winning Managing with Excellence book with a substantially researched body of work evaluating the key leadership characteristics for strong companies. Their work directly relates to leading agile organizations. |
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Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change by William Joiner and Stephen Josephs - The authors continue the body of research on the competencies and skills required to lead through agility. They parallel and deepen the three leadership levels outlined in the Bradford and Cohen work. |
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Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle - The original Scrum book. It has all of the basics you will need to know about how to run a Scrum Project. |
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Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn - Probably the most practical guide on the street today in putting the best agile practices to work to drive predictability in your projects. Mike has a vast experience in leading agile teams and this book is a result of that work. |
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The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber - Ken follows up his two Scrum application books with a focus on enterprise adoption. A key component of this book is the use of a transition team to aid the organization through the adoption. |
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Winning at New Products by Robert Cooper - This is an excellent resource for a complete understanding of the new product development lifecycle covering stage gate methodology and team composition. A key element is the Functional vs. Project matrix organization. |
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Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products by Jim Highsmith - An excellent resource specifically focused on the project management role in leading agile teams. Jim provides a solid framework for project success. |
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eXtreme Project Management by Douglas DeCarlo - This is an excellent resource for any current project manager looking to understand agility and how it applies to thier body of knowledge. Doug was the former head of the Project Management Institute (PMI). |
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Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni - Agility is about teamwork and teamwork is hard. Patrick has some wisdom on building high-performing teams, and his insights directly align to Scrum - focusing on results to drive accountability and commitment. |
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Death By Meeting: a Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni - Are your meetings ineffective? Patrick knows why and its not because you have too many. Read why he thinks we need more meetings - but contextually meaningful. It's what we do with Scrum. |
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Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit by Mary Poppendieck & Tom Poppendieck - Tom and Mary surface the lean principles behind many of the agile practices - optimizing the whole system, building quality in, reducing waste, and more. |
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Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary and Tom Poppendieck - Tom and Mary continue their body of knowledge through specific application of the lean principles in this updated work. |
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Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises
by Dean Leffingwell - Dean has some wise advice for scaling agility within the enterprise. Dean addresses requirements, architecture, release management and organizational concerns. |
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Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development by James Coplien & Neil Harrison - Jim and Neil distil years of studying software development teams into about 100 bite-sized patterns to apply to any software project or team. Their work preceeded most of the agile methods. |
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Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work by Rob Austin & Lee Devin - If you are looking at agility from a different perspective, this is a great resource. Rob and Lee compare agile software development to the making of theatre productions - they have a real need for ontime delivery! |
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Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges - If you are considering an agile transition from a traditional functional phase-based process, be prepared for change. William has some well researched advice on change of any kind. The key item I use from his work - the transition team. |
