• Agile & Scrum Basics

Must-Read for Agile enthusiasts! The 4 Best Agile Books

Scrum Master, Product Owners and Agile Coaches beware. These are books you must have read if you want to dive deeper into Agile theory. These books reveal the Agile roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach… Time to reveal the 4 best Agile books.

1. Mike Cohn – Succeeding with Agile Software Development (EN)

As a Scrum Master, you not only need to know what terms like Agile and Scrum mean, but you also need to be knowledgeable about how to get people to really take ownership of this process. This book clearly describes how to work with individuals, teams and organizations as a whole.

Individual level: tips for getting around resistance and how to help people to their new role within the organization.

Team level: at this level, we look closely at cultivating cooperation and leading teams.

Organization level: at the organizational level, this book lays the groundwork for scaling Scrum and how to deal with existing functions within the current organization.

Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach beware… If you want to succeed with Agile and Scrum, this is an important book to read.

2. Adrie Dolman – Agile Marketing (NL)

Adrie Dolman has written a very interesting book about organizations that in this digital age must be able to respond quickly to ever faster changing markets. No long development processes, but rather new marketing involving experimentation and data collection. This requires a lot from Agile teams responsible for developing flexible strategies, propositions and communications.

In the end, only one goal counts: delivering the highest value for the customer. Agile Marketing shows through practical tools how to work with a vibrant vision to create validated learning, your adaptable strategy and active stakeholder management.

This book is ideal for marketing managers, proposition managers, product managers, marketers and strategic directors. Adrie Dolman is also a trainer at Scrum Academy. Highly recommended!

3. The Age of Agile – Stephen Denning

Agile is rapidly conquering the business world. And rightly so. Organizations that embrace Agile Management are able to deliver more value for the customer. Improved quality, faster innovations and easier to adapt in changing markets. The great advantage of Agile is that it can be applied almost anywhere.

This book features multiple real-world examples from companies as diverse as Etsy, Barclays, Spotify and Microsoft. Stephen Denning introduces 3 laws of Agile Management and helps develop a new mindset. With this mindset, you can overcome obstacles and make the entire organization a lot more agile.

We live in an era where Agile working is perfectly normal. Not only does it give employees more satisfaction and customers or stakeholders a better product, but it is a good way to survive in a world of volatile markets.

This book is an argument for a new way of working Agile in the 21st century that puts the customer and/or stakeholder at the center.

4. This is Agile – Sander Hoogendoorn

A fascinating journey through all facets of Agile. Think backlogs, stand-up meetings, retrospectives, specification by example, Agile dashboards etcetera. In this book Sander Hoogendoorn shares his knowledge and experience in coaching Agile teams. It is not only a clear guide for beginners, but also contains many tips and insights for the Agile experts among us. This book answers a number of important questions:

• What is Agile? And how does it work?
• How do Agile teams work together?
• What Scrum roles are there and with what techniques?
• How does Scrum work?
• How do I put together my Agile process?