{"id":158,"date":"2018-08-22T22:42:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T20:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertkalweit.com\/en\/?p=158"},"modified":"2020-10-17T20:42:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T18:42:09","slug":"agile-reading-list-recommendations-beginners-progressives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertkalweit.com\/en\/2018\/08\/22\/agile-reading-list-recommendations-beginners-progressives\/","title":{"rendered":"Agile Reading List – Recommendations for Beginners and Progressives"},"content":{"rendered":"

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:<\/p>\n

[8.3.2018] If you were to give someone completely new to the topic 2-3 book recommendations on agile, which would it be?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Basically they all fit the pattern “If you wanted to read about Scrum, where to start?”<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> efficient blog post on my personal agile reading list.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Robert’s Top 10 agile book recommendations (bonus: Scrum and Leadership)<\/h2>\n
#1 Agile Project Management with Scrum- Schwaber, Ken<\/h5>\n

<\/a>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 From today’s point of view the examples are of course massively outdated – software projects are so fundamentally different now compared to 20 years ago.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.<\/p>\n

#2 Scrum – agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen – Pichler, Roman<\/h5>\n

<\/a>\"\"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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and I was equally impressed.<\/p>\n

#3 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Pink, Daniel H.<\/h5>\n

<\/a>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.<\/p>\n