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Books for Getting Started With Scrum

A collegue of mine asked me yesterday, "As a CIO, what books should I read to get up to speed on Scrum?" Here are my recommendations:
  1. Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber. The Basics, so start here.
  2. Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn  - How to plan the project
  3. User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn - how to gather requirements and size the project 
  4. Implementing Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck -- 7 principles to guide you from Concept to Cash
  5. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck -- 22 Tools from Seeing Waste to Contracting alternatives to get you from Concept to Cash.
These books are focused on strategic and operational management.

What are your suggestions for engineering practice books?
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Comments

Jonas said…
I would recommend "The Art of Agile Development" by James Shore and Shane Warden.
You can see the interview with Shane on InfoQ: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/The-Art-of-Agile-Development-James-Shore

Another one is "Scrum and XP from the Trenches" by Henrik Kniberg. See http://blog.crisp.se/henrikkniberg/

These two proved to be usefull to me.
10 July, 2008 11:41
gerhard said…
Not really about scrum, but for me a must read about making change happen:

"Fearless Change" by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising.
15 July, 2008 20:12
Peter said…
Hi Jonas & Gerhard,

Thanks for the tips. Scrum and XP is great. It was probably the third Scrum book I read. I didn't list it (blush) because when I read it, it wasn't really a book, just a big PDF ;-). But you're right, it goes on the main page.

I heard about Fearless Change at the German Scrum gathering last Friday. It sounds really interesting and I plan to put it on my holiday reading list.

Cheers,
Peter
15 July, 2008 21:07
Peter said…
I really like the Shore & Warden book. It's a good basis for building up the engineering skills in the team. The concept of "Études" is really useful.

There are now a few books in German:

Scrum - Agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen by Roman Pichler

and

Scrum. Produkte zuverlässig und schnell entwickeln by Boris Gloger

Ken Schwaber's Agile Project Management with Scrum is also available in German.

Cheers,

Peter
13 March, 2009 13:06
Laszlo S said…
I would add these two:

(a) Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines: http://www.amazon.com/Corps-Business-Management-Principles-Marines/dp/0066619793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237652286&sr=1-1

What's interesting about this one - is how much the culture of Scrum is described within.

(b) Slack by Tom Demarco is a must: http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/0767907698/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237652397&sr=1-1

The first two pages of the book will bring to light a great concept
21 March, 2009 17:21
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the list. A good recent book is

The Elements of Scrum
28 December, 2011 15:11
Peter said…
I was not comfortable with this last comment. In general, I'm OK with anonymous comments, but this one gave no indication who or why the book was being recommended -- a bit close to spam for my comfort.

Only because the authors were part of the Bay Area Agile community did I decide to publish this comment.


When recommending a book (and I am really glad for good recommendations!), please do not recommend anonymously. Please do not recommend your own books or include partner IDs in your links.

Thanks!
09 January, 2012 23:49
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