Here are some books we like. Click on the title for the LeanPub or Amazon page.
Daniel Vacanti (2015)
Daniel Vacanti (2020)
Both are extremely important, should be required reading for all coaches and trainers. It is shocking that many popular Agile tools still use averages for forecasting. Vacanti points out that this is likely due to the fact that we were all taught about the pareto principle and bell curves in school. The problem is that software development is not “normal,” that is, completion times do not follow a bell curve. More sophisticated statistical approaches are needed to create usable forecasts. Worse still, software processes that are not under control (those which exhibit a very high degree of unpredictability) may require a very large amount of historical data in order to make any kind of sound prediction. Regardless, Vacanti argues that we should consider re-forecasting whenever new data arises, ultimately leading to “continuous re-forecasting.” We also recommend Vacanti’s forecasting software Actionable Agile. While it is certainly not perfect, it is vastly better to the forecasting functions within the majority of software tools in wide use today.
Jim McCarthy (2002)
Extremely thought provoking. Years ahead of its time in my opinion. Explains what is effective but not how to get there.
John P. Kotter (2012)
Kotter has spent many years working with large organizations as they undergo transformational change. Unsurprisingly, he has come to the conclusion that such change is extremely difficult. So difficult, in fact, that such efforts rarely succeed. Nevertheless, the need to change rapidly has never been greater. Windows of opportunity open and close more quickly than ever, and companies that are more nimble tend to outpace their competitors. Kotter has come up with a “recipe” for change– a set of activities that he has seen over and over again in the organizations that have been successful at undergoing big changes. Kotter indicates that, while following the recipe does not guarantee success, skipping steps makes failure more likely. Although methods such as Kanban generally prefer to avoid such risky and disruptive changes (via an incremental approach), it is undeniable that there are times when an organization must pivot to survive, to take advantage of a massive opportunity, or to avoid a significant risk. Here is Kotter’s recipe:
General Stanley McChristal (2015)
Klaus Leopold (2015)
Klaus Leopold (2017)
Klaus Leopold (2018)
Very much enjoy Klaus’ writing, and he is clearly honing his vision and sharpening his writing skills with each book. Practical Kanban introduces the concept of Flight Levels and Rethinking Agile hones and polishes this vision. Flight levels provide a useful conceptual model for managing the flow of work and tying strategy to execution by visualizing work at three levels: strategic, coordination, and operational. When combined with the Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban (STATIK) and the Kanban Maturity Model (KMM), Flight Levels provides a powerful model for organizational improvement and alignment. Companies struggling to implement SAFe would do well to look into Flight Levels and KMM.
Mark Schwartz (2017)
Schwartz argues persuasively that IT leadership, in particular the CIO, has a critical role to play in an Agile organization. He argues that IT needs to participate actively in devising organizational strategy, alongside sales, marketing and finance. He stresses that IT should be evaluated not based on adherence to schedule or budget but by achieving outcomes. Agile and DevOps can shrink cycle times to the point that business hypotheses can be formulated and tested quickly. Schwartz advocates the “Beyond Budgeting” concept of setting guardrails, utilizing rolling wave planning and articulating assumptions and goals so they can be revisited when need be. Technical strategies can be linked to business drivers via “Impact Mapping,” a simple brainstorming technique invented by Gojko Adzic. Rather than tolerating change, we should welcome “as much change as results in a better outcome.” The CIO is the steward of three important assets: the enterprise architecture, IT resources and skills, and enterprise data. Some of my favorite quotes: “Unfortunately, we have set up IT around a control paradigm rather than a creative and enabling paradigm. This has caused business stakeholders to perceive IT as a limiter, a constraint, an impediment in achieving business objectives.” “The transformational project occurs when the amount of debt has become too much to bear. It is a painful lump-sum payment at a time when the company has been paying so much interest that it may already be frail and tottering.” “Transformational projects demonstrate waste in a governance process. If the governance process is unable to approve incremental changes to a system to keep it synchronized with business needs and technology trends, then that inability is costing the business money.” and “To be agile, in a sense, means to always be transforming.” Sobering thoughts.
Gerald Weinburg (1985)
Ray Immelman (2003)
Daniel Kahneman (2013)
Patrick Lencioni (2002)
Don Reinertson (2009)
Nassim Taleb (2014)
Scott Keller (2019)
Fascinating read from McKinsey senior partners documenting practices and approaches taken during 100s of organizational transformations, both failed and successful. The book provides many specific recommendations, all well-documented with footnotes and backed by statistics. It is a sequel to a previous edition by McKinsey and will be followed up with an expanded edition as more and more experience is accumulated.
Sharon Bowman (2009)
Peter Senge (2006)
Tom Demarco (2001)
Sam L. Savage (2009)
Clayton M. Christensen (2016)
Fascinating book explaining how true innovation happens: by understanding the customer’s Jobs To Be Done.
Bob Moesta (2020)
This book takes human centered/user-centric approach and explains the profound effect it can have on sales and marketing. Great read for consultants, entrepreneurs, marketing, and sales professionals.
David J Anderson (2003)
Precursor, written way before LeanKanban
David J Anderson (2012)
Fascinating account that explains thought process as LeanKaban was being conceived and codified. Valuable anecdotes help explain motivations and benefits of evolutionary approach.
Taiichi Ohno (1988)
I recommend this book for Agile coaches such as myself to help understand from where these ideas originated.
Bertrand Meyer (2014)
Part polemic, part paean from the inventor of the Eiffel programming language and the author of “Object Oriented Software Construction” the definitive work on that topic. Focuses mostly on Scrum. Interestingly, Kanban answers most of the author’s nitpicks with “agile.” It is in our opinion important and worthwhile for all Kanban coaches and trainers to be aware of agile’s “failure modes.”
Here are a couple related articles:
Why “Agile’ and especially Scrum are terrible
Michael O. Church
The tax you are paying for using Scrum
Martin Cerruti
James Womack (1996)
This is a classic originally written in 1996. I read the 2010 edition. This is one of the early books that attempted to translate the teachings of Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System to make it consumable by western readers. The book explains the five lean principles: specify value, identify the value stream, flow, pull, and pursue perfection. A good and quick read.
Jeff Patton (2014)
Alberto Brandolini (2021)
Gojko Adzic (2011)
Ward Cunningham, Rick Mugridge (2005)
Martin Fowler (1996)
C. Todd Lombardo, Bruce McCarthy (2017)
Gene Kim (2013)
Gene Kim (2019)
Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O’Reilly (2020)
Sam L. Savage (2009)
Michael Nygard (2007)
Stephen Few (2004)
We think his later 2009 book “Now you see it, simple visualization techniques for quantitative analysis” is even better!
Jez Humble (2010)
Kent Beck (1999)
Reading this in 1999 changed the course of our careers!
Modig, Niklas, Ahlstrom, Par (2012)
Very clear explanation of Lean
Lyssa Adkins (2010)
Despite the general-sounding title, this is pretty scrum-specific
Gunther Verheyen (2021)
A good companion to the Scrum Guide. I like two insights in particular:
Ryan Singer (2019)
A complete reimagining of what it means to be Agile, going back to first principles. Concise and very thought-provoking. Ryan recommends a way of working that is broken into 6-week cycles separated by 2-week “cool down” periods. Directly customer-valued features are first “Shaped” by senior teams and then “pitched” to decide whether they will be worked on or not. The features are separated into “medium” and “small” sizes– anything larger than a medium (3-4 people for 6 weeks) is further broken down. Here are some of the more interesting recommendations:
Corey Ladas (2009)
Showing its age; many of the recommendations or techniques have been superseded by better ones. However, we still prefer this due to the quality and clarity of the exposition over newer Scrumban books
Eliyahu Goldratt (1984)
Lean for manufacturing and physical processes
Ryan Ripley (2020)
Despite the title, this is a pretty good guide to state of the art modern Scrum. Don’t Scrum like its 1999. Get this book and see what you have been missing! There are plenty of good insights here. For example:
Hiren Doshi (2016)
Another good set of insights for Scrum teams. Here are some nuggets:
Daniel Vacanti (2015)
Daniel Vacanti (2020)
Extremely important, should be required reading for all coaches and trainers.
George Dinwiddie (2019)
A brand new book and worthy successor to replace the venerable scrum-based estimation book by Mike Cohn Agile Estimation and Planning. George covers a lot of ground, but in my opinion misses a few important points regarding large-scale Agile efforts within the federal government space (admittedly, this is an extremely specialized environment). Nevertheless there is a great deal of excellent material to mine here.
Vasco Duarte (2015)
Fun read full of wisdom. The keynote video on his website is an absolute gem. Unfortunately it is paywalled.