Colleagues and friends know me to have read quite a bit about agile. About methods, backgrounds, best practices and the like. There had always been requests for agile book recommendations. Since I’m self-employed and freelancing even more people than before have been asking for my agile reading list. The questions always were along the lines of:
[8.3.2018] If you were to give someone completely new to the topic 2-3 book recommendations on agile, which would it be?
[24.4.2018] I just want to do something for my professional education. And ideally that would be something that fits my current challenges on the job.
Basically they all fit the pattern “If you wanted to read about Scrum, where to start?”
Time and time again I’m recommending the same books. Every time I’m copy+pasting Amazon- or Goodreads-Links, so the people asking have an easier time finding the right books. That’s very effective, but not very efficient for a task that has become repetitive. So here’s the effective and efficient blog post on my personal agile reading list.
You’ll find my Goodreads-shelf at the bottom of the article. But first things first, here are the books ordered by importance for people who really want to get closer to the topic of agile.
Robert’s Top 10 agile book recommendations (bonus: Scrum and Leadership)
#1 Agile Project Management with Scrum- Schwaber, Ken
In the first Scrum book I ever read, Ken Schwaber writes about examples from his professional career and how Scrum practices work. This way one learns quite naturally and also very entertaining about the advantages of this framework. From today’s point of view the examples are of course massively outdated – software projects are so fundamentally different now compared to 20 years ago. Nevertheless many of the problems can be traced back to the very same root causes, which makes this book timeless with regards to the suggested solutions.
#2 Scrum – agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen – Pichler, Roman
After the light fare of Ken Schwaber, here the (in my opinion) very best book on Scrum. Published in 2008, so a bit aged by now, this book is still the most comprehensive Scrum book. Mainly because it doesn’t only explain Scrum practices, but also shows why they are so effective. Also it doesn’t just list recommendations, but shows where these are advantageous over other implementations.
Perfectly justified this book is the reference in the realm of German-speakers (unfortunately it’s only available in German). Only nine years after reading it and being incredibly inspired, I managed to see a Roman Pichler presentation at the Scrum Gathering Dublin 2017 and I was equally impressed.
#3 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Pink, Daniel H.
To be honest I never completely read this book. I love to point colleagues and friends to the excellent RSA Animate video, in which one gets a 10-minute summary. For most people that’s enough to internalize the 3 aspects of motivation (Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose) whilst creating / staffing a project team or during other tasks in project management.
#4 Lean from the Trenches – Kniberg, Henrik
Henrik Kniberg manages to not only explain methods, but to justify it’s usage. This justification is fundamentally important for the consciously applied method to become routine. Only once all of us and everyone on the team realizes why we follow a best practice can the best practice prevail.
Equally recommended: Scrum and XP from the Trenches.
#5 Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership – Watts, Geoff
Books #1 – #4 provide and excellent intro to the topic: Scrum, Lean, Kanban are understood and one can draw conclusions on human motivation. With all this, beginners can start and should be okay to work very well within the context of one project.
Who wants to engage in the ScrumMaster “career path”, who wants to be better than the competition and who really wants to drive teams for the better and support their growth, should definitely read Scrum Mastery. Vivid examples show the difference between a good and a great ScrumMaster. A humbling experience, for me too.
#6 Rework – Fried, Jason
Rework has become a management classic since the day it’s been published. Who already has internalized agile values, will nod a lot whilst reading this book. For everyone else the book explains short and concise ways of management and ways of working, which help teams and organizations to focus on the important things and to finish things.
#7 Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great – Derby, Esther & Larsen, Diana
How does a good team become a great team? With time and continuous improvement. This book justifies the use of Retrospectives and supports the improvement process with moderation methods and several valuable hints on conflict resolution.
#8 The Peter Principle – Peter, Laurence J.
Take it, change it or leave it!
— 21st Century Business Wisdom
People deal differently with problems. One can take them, (try to) change them or one can leave them (and the company) behind.
What are the skills of your manager? Which abilities helped your manager reach the current position? Which qualities are missing now in order to still be “competent”? Sometimes the agile change process depends on single individuals. To understand their (lack of) motivation, the Peter Principle really helps.
#9 Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness – Greenleaf, Robert K.
Servant Leadership means the principle of leading by supporting people and teams. I facilitate following my lead, I’m making it as easy as possible to follow, by serving the team. Servant Leadership is what a ScrumMaster expresses on a daily basis (or at least should). This book gets to the bottom of this principle (and it’s doing so for 30+ years already):
#10 The Big Five for Life – Strelecky, John P.
How do you imagine your future career?
a manager had asked me some years ago. I didn’t have an answer. Work is a big part of life. And in order to know where to drive the career, where to go professionally, one first has to know where life itself should go. Unfortunately this question is even bigger and more difficult. The Big Five for Life helps finding an answer. This book doesn’t have much to do with agile, but even more deals with leadership and integrity.
Even more recommendations around agility in professional institutions
Managers, programmers, product folks, ScrumMasters: The Top 10 books above are relevant for anybody interested in agile, no matter which role one has on the job. However there are some more specific books for each role which I don’t want to leave unmentioned here:
For Software Developers
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – Robert C. Martin
Beyond that I have no further recommendations for Software Developers. Obviously all of the above books in this post are equally relevant! Robert C. Martins “Bible” also suffices for the start. But who wants to know more about why “Agile” is first and foremost a software developers responsibility, please watch this session:
For Product Owners and Product Managers
- Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love – Roman Pichler
- User Stories Applied – Mike Cohn
- Scrum mit User Stories – Ralf Wirdemann
For (C-Level-) Managers
- Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time – Jeff Sutherland
- The Power of Scrum – Jeffrey Sutherland, Rini Van Solingen, Eelco Rustenberg
- A Seat at the Table – Mark Schwartz
Last but not least: The Goodreads List
Do you have more agile book recommendations? Let me know! I’m happy about suggestions for the reading lists on Goodreads or right here in the comments section.
Even before, I was determined to use Agile in non-software-development environments. The CPO of one of my 
