Book: Lyssa Adkins - Coaching Agile Teams

The definitive must-read for every Scrum Master, agile manager, and agile coach!

Author: Lyssa Adkins

Title: Coaching Agile Teams

Rating: highest recommendation!

This is one of the most valuable books I've ever read in my agile life. More than 300 pages full of practical advice with many examples make this book a perfect reference on the desk of every Scrum Master, agile manager, and agile coach.

Lyssa has a very nice and easy to read style of writing and yet offers so many insights. Following topics are covered in her book:

• You and your mastery as a coach
• Coach as Coach-Mentor
• Coach as Facilitator
• Coach as Teacher
• Coach as Problem Solver
• Coach as Conflict Navigator
• Coach as Collaboration Conductor
• Agile Coach Failure, Recovery, and Success Modes
• Your Journey as Agile Coach

There's nothing more to say about this book other than: buy it, study it, and live it!

It may sound pathetic but this book deeply changed the way I think about and practice agile methods. It probably even changed my life.

Thanks, Lyssa, for writing this book!

Book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

The definitive must-read for everyone having anything to do with teams!

Author: Patrick Lencioni
Title: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Rating: highest recommendation!

Have you ever wondered why weekly team meetings become meaningless rituals without any results? Have you ever had the feeling that important topics were not discussed and severe conflicts not surfaced?

This book offers a very simple model of five dysfunctions of a team. The model explains typical anti-patterns of behavior you can recognize in many teams:

1. Absence of Trust
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results

Some nice exercises to overcome these dysfunctions are described as well.

The first 90% of the book are written as a novel which is easy to read and understand but still highly exciting and insightful. The latter part of the book contains the pure description of the model and the exercises. But it's much more fun to read the novel and see how Kathryn--the main protagonist--is analyzing and guiding the team away from its old habits and dysfunctions.

In the real world you could use the model for team building events or retrospective meetings. Explain this simple model to your team and confront them with their habits. As simple as it is to understand, as hard is it to live it in a team. Just do it and give it a try!

I give this book the highest rating possible. Buy it, study it, apply it, share it with your peers!

Book: Fearless Change

If you need to get some activities to drive change, read this book.

Authors: Mary Lynn Manns, Linda Rising

Title: Fearless Change

Rating: recommended

You work as a change agent? You have a new idea for your organization and want to change processes and interactions? This book may be helpful as it presents 48 patterns for introducing new ideas.

The first part of the book describes a general approach with many examples how to apply all the different patterns. The second part contains detailed descriptions of the patterns with many cross-references between them.

Although the majority of the patterns should be well known to change agents, there might be many insights how to initiate and maintain changes inside an organization. In my point of view there are no brand-new approaches presented in the book. The highest value this book provides is giving an elaborated pattern language so people involved in change are able to talk about the same things with the same wording.

This review may sound as the book would not be worth its pages. Don't get me wrong. It contains a very nice reference and map of change patterns to look up. I'm going to take a look at a random pattern from time to time just to get a reminder and maybe new insights.

Read it so we can talk about it!

Book: Harrison Owen - Wave Rider

Everyone dealing with self-organizing teams should read this book!

Authors: Harrison Owen

Title: Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World

Rating: highly recommended

Have you ever wondered why in a well-defined organization there are always a few "key" people who know how things really do work? Have you ever thought about how to plan and deliver the daily food supplies for several million people? Read this book to find out.

In the first part of this book Harrison Owen offers deep theoretical insights of High Performance Systems, Self-Organization, and Open Space Technology. According to his definition, the three major elements of High Performance are chaos, confusion, and conflict, which lead to wholeness, health, and harmony--be it in small teams or large organizations. He states the necessity of grief work at the end of anything, and that--although highly important--such grief work rarely happens. The reason of missing self-organization is the need of control coming from traditional habits and thinking.

The second part of the book is written for practitioners and shows "eight essential steps for the care and feeding of self-organizing systems":

1. Do Your Homework Before You Start.
2. Extend an Invitation.
3. Come to the Circle.
4. Welcome Passion, Responsibility, and Authentic Leadership.
5. Remember the Four Principles.
6. Observe the Law of Two Feet.
7. Keep Grief Working.
8. Formalize the System.

This may sound weird at the first look but it gives a very nice description how Open Space works and how to do it.

The book is an eye-opener and offers so many insights why and how self-organizing systems work. The level of understanding one may reach by reading this book is not restricted to Open Space but is applicable to any organizational structure.

Book: Henrik Kniberg - Scrum and XP from the Trenches: How We Do Scrum

This is the must-read book for any new agile team member!

Author: Henrik Kniberg
Title: Scrum and XP from the Trenches: How We Do Scrum
http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches
Rating: highly recommended!

Are you dealing with new agile team members from time to time? Do you have to train and explain agile to developers, testers, managers? Do you need an easy to understand book on agile practices? Do you need a highly practical book on how to do Scrum and XP?

Get a copy of Henrik Kniberg's outstanding book and just distribute it to your audience.

This book is full of practical information and shows a very pragmatic approach of implementing Scrum and XP practices with an agile team. It covers almost all aspects and is really easy to read and understand.

Although in my opinion there is no best practice how to be agile--this book just shows a great way how it works. I give this book to all my teams and other people new to agile. It's just a great start to learn about agile practices.

Book: How to Read a Book

Everyone reading a large number of articles and books could read this book.

Authors: Mortimer J. Adler, Charles van Doren

Title: How to Read a Book

Rating: interesting

This book was one of many recommended readings from my survey at ACCDE10. The title was promising so I decided to give it a try.

Many aspects of the reading task are covered in both theoretical and practical ways. Four levels of reading are distinguished:

1. elementary reading - nothing more or less than the ability to read and understand written text
2. inspectional reading - the ability to skim and browse quickly through a text
3. analytical reading - the ability to get into the details of a text as well as understanding and criticizing an author's messages
4. syntopical reading - the ability to analyze and put a text into the context of related books on the same topic

The book offers many practical advice on how to read texts of specific kinds like e.g. history, novels, mathematics, and practical books.

I made the experience to have applied some of the practical advices to the book itself. So I skipped some 40% of the actual content of the book - and I don't feel bad about it. I assume such reading behavior was intended by the authors.

On the other hand I'm still puzzled if the book is worth its 400 pages. I'm sure the essence of the book with all its advices and "how to"s would fit on less than 10 pages. The authors probably should have read something like "How to write a book". Nonetheless the book is interesting and to read it may serve well for a reflection on one's own reading approach.

Book: Rachel Davies - Agile Coaching

Everyone supporting agile teams has to read this book!

Authors: Rachel Davies, Liz Sedley

Title: Agile Coaching

Rating: highly recommended!

More and more developers and project managers suddenly have to take over the role of ScrumMaster these days. All our agile frameworks and methodologies are easy to learn and understand so people become facilitators, supporters, and coaches of an agile team--without knowing anything about how to do that effectively. 

This book covers many important aspects of coaching an agile team.

Starting with coaching basics the authors explain what it means to work as an agile coach. Why do I coach? Do I have the right attitude for coaching? What does it mean to work with people? How do I encourage change? How can I help building an agile team? These and related questions get answered in the first part of the book.

Part two describes a lot of coaching tips and practices related to the planning activities of a team. The reader gets answers to questions like: How can I facilitate daily standup and planning meetings? Is it really necessary to coach in daily standup meetings? How to support the team understanding user stories and backlog priorities? How to create the team board and increase visibility?

The third part takes care about quality: How to introduce test-driven development? How to introduce clean code? How to start with pair programming? How to define and get to "done"?

The fourth and last part of the book covers inspection and adaption practices: How do I demo working software increments? How do I facilitate a retrospective meeting? What can I do to get better as a coach?

A very helpful resource in this book are all the short experience reports of Rachel and Liz. Every chapter ends with a typical list of hurdles and contains a checklist so it's easy to do regular self-reflections of specific topics as an agile coach.

This is a really nice reference book on the ScrumMaster's desk to look up how to improve one's own coaching skills.

Book: Taiichi Ohno - Toyota Production System

Everyone interested in historic basics of Scrum and other agile approaches should read this book.

Author: Taiichi Ohno

Title: Toyota Production System

Taiichi Ohno - Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production

Rating: recommended

If you want to understand several basic principles of Scrum and other agile approaches then take a deeper look at Taiichi Ohno's book. He describes the historic development of all those famous Toyota principles one can see adopted in many agile frameworks:

• kanban
• just-in-time
• five why's (real cause)
• production leveling
• visual control (management by sight)
• waste recognition and elimination

All of this was started some 80 years ago by the visionary Toyoda Sakichi and brought to perfection by his successor Toyoda Kiichiro. The book shows some insight how these people thought and managed their organization. It also covers some economical history of the competitive automobile markets of Japan, Europe, and the USA in the first half of the 20th century.

Overall the book does not unveil the deep details how to implement a Toyota-like production system but it gives great background information why and how this system was invented with all its principles and practices.

The appendix "Glossary of Major Terms" is a nice reference of all important concepts.

Book: Mike Cohn - Agile Estimating and Planning

Everyone getting agile has to read this book!

Author: Mike Cohn

Title: Agile Estimating and Planning

http://bit.ly/1JA1Cr

Rating: highly recommended!

This book is just a must have and a must read! Mike Cohn describes all important aspects and concepts of estimating and planning in an agile approach. Lots of real-world examples show how to apply these concepts.

Note that this book is NOT about traditional estimating and planning for agile projects. It is about *agile estimating and planning* and this is what agile projects need to succeed.

You probably read several Scrum books and know the basics about story points, planning poker, story priorities, sprint planning, burndown charts, and velocity. If you really want to get in-depth details on all these and related topics you have to read this book! It is worth every single word - and Mike knows that "every word counts".

If you already are running agile practices then read this book and inspect your methods. You will find so many things to improve and adapt.

Enough said. Buy it, read it, and keep it on your table for reference!

PS: I'm looking forward to read Mike's new book "Succeeding with Agile". It will be on Amazon's stock on Monday.

Book: Mike Cohn - User Stories Applied

Everyone getting agile has to read this book!

Author: Mike Cohn
Title: User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development
http://bit.ly/POrak

Rating: highly recommended!

During any approach to implement agile procedures in an organisation there is a need to explain how management and engineering of requirements should work. Coming from traditional waterfall projects most people do not understand what those User Story stuff is all about. Usually lot of concerns are mentioned...

"So, User Stories are Use Cases, right? Why don't you just call it Use Case?"

"But we need all requirements at the start of our project. How should that work with User Stories?"

"No, we don't need that. We know what the customers want and we know all features of the product. What for should we waste time with User Stories?"

Mike Cohn is one of the most experienced agilists and board member of the Scrum Alliance. In his book he explains every detail you must know about User Stories. This books makes you understand how to argue against the usual concerns. Mike wrote down his vast experience and makes any aspect of the topic easy to read.

Did you ever wonder how to deal with nonfunctional requirements in Scrum? Read this book and find out.

Did you ever ask who would be the best product owner writing your stories? Read this book.

Have you read this book and still have issues bothering you about User Stories? Well, you either got lost in something else than being agile or you probably may be on to something really new.

Book: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen - Agile Retrospectives

Everyone working with teams has to read this book!

Authors: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen
Title: Agile Retrospectives - Making Good Teams Great
http://bit.ly/cvoaH

Rating: highly recommended!

Esther Derby and Diana Larsen describe 38 activities for all stages of a retrospective meeting. These activities provide ways to improve the team work and to get better results of the retrospective. There are no rules when to choose which activity but you get a nice set of activities to select from. Goal: avoid boring routine by varying activities.

Retrospectives are one of the major keys to successful agile teams! This book helps to improve teams and so to improve the agile approach of a team.

Be aware of technical teams being focussed on hard skills rather than soft skills - this may be a problem to solve before introducing an activity working with feelings of team members and the expression of feelings. Tech staff often judges such things as psycho stuff. So what is the great thing about retrospectives? Even the 'psycho stuff' situations will improve as the team does.

Conclusion: read this book and try to vary your very next retrospective meeting.