Best Agile Books for Project Management and Development

best agile books

Agile is a methodology for software development which involves the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams and their customers.

Agile methods or Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management process which allows for rapid delivery of high-quality software and a business approach that aligns development with customers need and company.

If you want to learn top to bottom about the best agile books for project management, you should read these following books.

Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction
Author: Chris Sims,Hillary Louise Johnson
Published at: 03/04/2012
ISBN: 193796504X
This pocket-sized overview book has been adapted from the bestseller book 'The Elements of Scrum'  which is written by two scrum specialist Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson.

If you want to understand the essentials of Agile development and Scrum then this book is must read.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to build a better mousetrap.
  • Understand what is the scrum and why you using it.
  • How to learn scrum artifacts.
  • This book contains the whole concept of the sprint cycle.
  • Discover product backlog and sprint backlog.
  • Abnormal sprint termination and many more.


Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Author: Robert C. Martin
Published at: 11/08/2008
ISBN: 0132350882
This whole book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part describes several case studies of increasing complexity.

The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst for producing better code.

What You Will Learn:
  • You will understand what is right about the code, and what is wrong with the code.
  • Learn how to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.
  • How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code.
  • Create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes.
  • Format code for maximum readability.
  • How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic.
  • The writer shows unit tests and practice test-driven development in this book.


Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn))
Author: Kenneth S. Rubin
Published at: 05/08/2012
ISBN: 0137043295
Leading Scrum coach and trainer Kenny Rubin illuminates the values, principles, and practices of Scrum, and describes flexible, proven approaches that can help you implement it far more effectively.

If you want to use Scrum to develop innovative products and services that delight your customers, Essential Scrum is the complete, single-source reference you’ve been searching for this book.

What You Will Learn:
  • 'Essential Scrum' will provide every team member, manager, and executive with a common understanding of Scrum.
  • It provides easy-to-digest descriptions.
  • Practical knowledge for deriving maximum value.
  • Introduce, clarify, and deepen your Scrum knowledge on the team, product, and portfolio levels.
  • Discover agile principles.
  • Learn product backlog.
  • 'Essential Scrum' contains, estimation process, velocity and many more.


Agile Project Management: A Complete Beginner's Guide To Agile Project Management
Author: Marcus Ries,Diana Summers
Published at: 03/11/2016
ISBN: 1539877302
This book can be divided into four parts. The first part describes effective communication with clients/parties, the second part describes delivering a work application.

The third part describes how collaborating with clients and the fourth part describes changing up the scope of work.

What You Will Learn:
  • Discovering an agile manifesto with its features and meaning.
  • Learning agile software development step by step.
  • Dynamic system development model and its applications.
  • Includes the phases of the Atern project.
  • Operational level management techniques.
  • The writers of this book show you service design, transitions, and operations.
  • Understand sprint reviews, sprint retrospectives and many more.


Agile Project Management with Scrum (Developer Best Practices)
Author: Ken Schwaber
Published at: 21/02/2004
ISBN: 073561993X
Agile project management with scrum provides you how to use Scrum to solve complex problems and drive better results delivering more valuable software faster.

What You Will Learn:
  • Manage unknown or changing product requirements.
  • How to simplify the chain of command with self-managing development teams.
  • Reduce project planning time and required tools.
  • Includes inspecting, reporting on, and fine-tuning.
  • How to support multiple teams working on a large-scale project from many geographic locations.


Agile Estimating and Planning
Author: Mike Cohn
Published at: 11/11/2005
ISBN: 0131479415
Agile Estimating and Planning is a practical guide to estimating and planning different agile projects. This book discusses the philosophy of agile estimating and planning and shows you how to get the job done, with real-world examples and case studies

What You Will Learn:
  • You how to split large features into smaller, more manageable ones.
  • How and when to re-estimate.
  • Describes why conventional prescriptive planning fails and why agile planning works.
  • Estimate projects that will be worked on by multiple teams.
  • Financial and non-financial approaches.
  • Discover how to plan iterations and predict your team's initial rate of progress.


Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn))
Author: Lyssa Adkins
Published at: 28/05/2010
ISBN: 0321637704
In this book, you’ll find a deep view of the role of the agile coach, discover what works and what doesn’t, and learn how to adapt powerful skills from many allied disciplines, including the fields of professional coaching and mentoring.

What You Will Learn:
  • What will need to be a great agile coach?
  • The book covers mastering all of the agile coach’s roles: teacher, mentor, problem solver, conflict navigator, and performance coach.
  • How to create an environment where self-organized, high-performance teams can emerge.
  • Discover recognization failure, recovery, and success modes in your coaching.
  • Stay actively engaged without dominating your team and stunting its growth.
  • Evolve your leadership style as your team grows and changes.


Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale
Author: Gary Gruver,Tommy Mouser
Published at: 01/08/2015
ISBN: 1942788010
'Leading the Transformation' is an executive guide, providing a clear framework for improving development and delivery. Instead of the traditional Agile and DevOps approaches this book focuses on improving the effectiveness of teams.

What You Will Learn:
  • A clear framework for improving development and delivery.
  • This book targets the coordination of work across teams in large organizations.
  • The effectiveness of teams instead of the traditional Agile and DevOps approaches.
  • Discover how to take challenges with scaling agile teams.
  • This book includes business objectives and crucial first steps.
  • 'Leading The Transformation' shows you enterprise-level continuous improvement.
  • How to design the deployment pipeline and many more.


Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd Edition)
Author: Jim Highsmith
Published at: 20/07/2009
ISBN: 0321658396
Nowadays, the project management process moves faster. Project management needs to become more flexible and far more responsive to customers. Using Agile Project Management (APM), project managers can achieve all these goals without compromising value, quality, or business discipline.

What You Will Learn:
  • Understanding the agile revolution’s impact on product development.
  • How to recognize when agile methods will work in project management, and when they won’t.
  • Discover realistic business objectives for Agile Project Management.
  • How to utilize a proven Agile Enterprise Framework that encompasses governance, project and iteration management, and technical practices.
  • How to optimize all five stages of the agile project: Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and Close.
  • Discover organizational and product-related processes for scaling agile to the largest projects and teams.
  • This book includes agile project governance solutions for executives and management.
  • How to promote agile values and principles across the organization.


Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme
Author: Robert K. Wysocki
Published at: 16/12/2013
ISBN: 1118729161

This book is ideal for instructors and students as well as active project managers. 'Effective Project Management' is enriched with case studies, accompanying exercises and solutions on the companion website, and PowerPoint slides for all figures and tables.

What You Will Learn:
  • This book include examines traditional, agile, and extreme project management techniques.
  • Enterprise project management model.
  • How to implement Kanban and Scrumban methodologies.
  • Includes a companion website with exercises and solutions and as well as PowerPoint slides for all the figures and tables used.
  • 'Effective Project Management' serves as a comprehensive guide to project management for both educators and project management professionals.


Project Management: Proven Principles in Agile Project Management for Successful Managers and Businesses (Project Management 101)
Author: Thomas Keane
Published at: 19/03/2017
ISBN: 1520877137
This book contains a detailed description of agile project management and product management using scrum and other methodologies. By reading this book, you will know how projects work and what you can do to ensure their success.

What You Will Learn:
  • 15 common mistakes in project management you have to avoid.
  • This book contains the different aspects of the field such as quality management and risk management.
  • How to define agile software development and Scrum.
  • 'Project  Management' by Thomas Keane gives your team’s performance and record all the lessons you’ve learned from it.
  • In this book, you will find the business communication and presentation skills.
  • This book shows you how to effective project planning and resource management.
  • How to close and evaluate project success.


Agile Project Management with Kanban (Developer Best Practices)
Author: Eric Brechner
Published at: 26/03/2015
ISBN: 0735698953
This book can help you achieve this goal: Agile Project Management with Kanban. This book is for practicing or aspiring software development professionals.

What You Will Learn:
  • This book includes how to integrate Kanban into large projects.
  • Learn, how to plan and staff new projects more effectively.
  • You will discover how to minimize work in progress and quickly adjust to change.
  • This book shows you how to eliminate artificial meetings and prolonged stabilization.
  • Discover how to visualize workflow and fix revealed bottlenecks.
  • How to drive quality upstream.
  • Learn, how to improve and enhance customer engagement.


Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
Author: Johanna Rothman
Published at: 24/02/2016
ISBN: 1943487073
This is the book that has created an excellent guide for managing a large project. It provides autonomy, collaboration, and exploration across the organization and delivers your product also creates an environment of servant leadership and small-world networks.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to define agile and lean program management.
  • This book shows how to collaborate around deliverables, not meetings.
  • How agile and lean together create adaptive programs.
  • Find which measurements to use and how to use those measures to help people deliver more of what you want (value) and less of what you don’t want.
  • You will understand how to consider, organize and start your program teams.
  • Includes how to create Small- World Networks to optimize learning.


Agile Almanac – Book 1: Single-Team Projects and Exam Prep
Author: John Stenbeck
Published at: 01/12/2015
ISBN: 0984669353
This book has been collected and codified the various Agile choices and options available at the intersection of Lean Principles, Product Development, and Project Management.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to lead a non-software environment.
  • Presents the information in an easily accessible and immediately applicable fashion.
  • Select precisely the content and applying it in the ways best suited to the context of their environments.
  • You will understand the outcome of a collaboration between the best and brightest minds working with Agile in the current environment of organizations. 
  • Discover how the Agile domain can be divided into three sub-domains.
  • This book covers the necessary and important insights that launched Agile 1.0.


Agile Project Management: Quick-Start Guide For Beginners And How To Implement Agile Step-By-Step
Author: Harry Altman
Published at: 11/09/2017
ISBN: 1976319056
This book discusses at length how agile project management principles and practices empower project managers to adapt to and manage effectively a new kind of innovative product development.

This book will also be useful to those Agile beginners who want a better understanding of what agile is all about.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to observe and analyze the circumstances of readers and then determine the suitable approach. 
  • Learn, a simple way to understand language.
  • This book includes a useful collection of recipes for people.
  • 'Agile Project Management' by Harry Altman describes the combining process with an international project management methodology.
  • Discover a scrum and agile principle.
  • How to execute agile project management.
  • This book also includes an agile software development technique.


The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done
Author: Stephen Denning
Published at: 08/02/2018
ISBN: 0814439098
The age of agile enables a team, a unit, or an enterprise to nimbly adapt and upgrade products and services to meet rapidly changing technology and customer's need.

What You Will Learn:
  • How can you deliver instant, intimate, frictionless value on a large scale project?
  • Learn, how can it helps the reader.
  • How to overcome the constraints.
  • Discover the entire organization agile and more.
  • You will also learn the law of small teams, customers, and networks.


Agile Coaching
Author: Rachel Davies,Liz Sedley
Published at: 07/09/2009
ISBN: 1934356433
This book is a practical guide to creating strong agile teams. It gives you coaching tools that you can apply whether you are a project manager, a technical lead, or working in a software team.

Each chapter of this book also covers the hurdles that you and your team may face and what to do to clear them.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to build a team that produces great software.
  • By reading this book you will able to create a team that's self-sufficient and skillful.
  • Discover how to create software.
  • This book shows you what to avoid when introducing agile practices to your team.
  • Gather deeper knowledge on how to agile practices work.


Agile Application Security: Enabling Security in a Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Author: Laura Bell,Michael Brunton-Spall,Rich Smith,Jim Bird
Published at: 06/10/2017
ISBN: 1491938846
'Agile Application Security' is a practical guide that introduces several security tools and techniques adapted specifically to integrate with agile development.

This book begins by introducing security principles to agile practitioners, and agile principles to security practitioners.

What You Will Learn:
  • This book shows you how to identify the reveal problems.
  • Learn, how to integrate security with planning, requirements, design, and at the code level.
  • How to add security practices to each stage of your existing development life-cycle.
  • Discover the agile vulnerability management.
  • Implement regulatory compliance in an agile or DevOps environment.
  • Security testing as part of your team’s effort to deliver working software in each release.


Agile Project Management: QuickStart Guide - The Complete Beginners Guide To Mastering Agile Project Management! (Scrum, Project Management, Agile Development)
Author: Steven Jones
Published at: 18/05/2016
ISBN: 1533321280
Agile Project Management has been around in one form or another for a long time and has matured into a process that can have profound effects on a product’s development, time to market, and nimble support of company business goals.

This book provides all this and more, first going over general topics and then diving into additional details on key topics.

What You Will Learn:
  • Learn agile project management overview details, benefits of agile.
  • This book shows you when not to use agile and team structuring.
  • 'Agile Project Management' describes various agile deliverable techniques.
  • You will also discover the agile process.
  • This book shows you how to avoid the “waterfall”.
  • 'Agile Project Management' guide gives you basic tips and tricks for success.


User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
Author: Mike Cohn
Published at: 11/03/2004
ISBN: 0321205685
This is the book through which the users will find the best way to build software, to begin with, "user stories": simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users.

What You Will Learn:
  • What makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. 
  • User interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops.
  • Discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak to your users.
  • Shows you how to work with managers, trainers, salespeople, and other "proxies".
  • Includes how to write user stories for acceptance testing.


Software in 30 Days: How Agile Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, and Leave Competitors in the Dust
Author: Ken Schwaber,Jeff Sutherland
Published at: 01/05/2012
ISBN: 1118206665
This book summarizes the Agile and Scrum software development method, which allows the creation of game-changing software, in just 30 days. The software in 30 Days is a must-read book for all managers and business owners who use the software in their organizations or in their products and want to stop the cycle of slow, expensive software development.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to produce software for 30 days.
  • A radical approach to getting IT projects done faster and cheaper than anyone thinks possible.
  • Understand how the unorthodox process works, how to get started, and how to succeed.
  • The productivity gain vs traditional "waterfall" methods has been over 100% on many projects.
  • Includes the "Scrum" technique for building software in 30 days.
  • The crisis in software. 


Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum
Author: Mike Cohn
Published at: 05/11/2009
ISBN: 0321579364
This is the book that is 100% practical guidance for making Scrum and agile work in any organization. This is the definitive, realistic, actionable guide to starting fast with Scrum and agile–and then succeeding over the long haul.

What You Will Learn:
  • Learn, how to overcome individual resistance to the changes Scrum requires.
  • You staffing Scrum projects and how to build effective teams.
  • How to establish “improvement communities” of people who are passionate about driving change.
  • Discover agile technical practices to use or experiment with.
  • How to lead self-organizing teams.
  • 'Succeeding with agile' shows you how to use Scrum on projects with complex sequential processes or challenging compliance and governance requirements.
  • Learn scrum’s impact on HR, facilities, and project management.


Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Agile Software Development Series)
Author: Jim Highsmith
Published at: 10/07/2009
ISBN: B002HMJYAG
This is the book through which the project managers can achieve knowledge for creating innovative products. The many topics have been added in this new edition including incorporating agile values, scaling agile projects, release planning, portfolio governance, and enhancing organizational agility.

What You Will Learn:
  • This book shows you how to recognize when agile methods will work in project management and when they won’t.
  • How to set realistic business objectives for Agile Project Management.
  • Agile Enterprise Framework that encompasses governance, project and iteration management, and technical practices.
  • How to optimize all five stages of the agile project: Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and Close.
  • Learn “Agile Triangle”: measuring performance in ways that encourage agility instead of discouraging it.


Agile Project Management: A Quick Start Beginner’s Guide To  Mastering Agile Project Management
Author: Henry O'Brien
Published at: 23/09/2015
ISBN: 1517481856
The book describes the basics including the composition of the project team and shows you the role of each participant. Agile Project Management is a well-rounded introduction to the principles of managing a project with diligence and efficiency.

What You Will Learn:
  • Learn, what is agile project management and why.
  • The difference between agile and traditional project management methods.
  • This book shows you how to incorporate scrum into agile project management.
  • You will be known why you need to introduce agile project management in your business.
  • Discover the problems that often arise when introducing agile for the first time in an organization.
  • 'Agile Project Management' describes how to receive training in agile project management.
  • Learn why leaders are better off taking the PMI-ACP course.


Agile Project Management For Dummies
Author: Mark C. Layton
Published at: 08/05/2012
ISBN: 1118026241
This is the first book to provide a simple, step-by-step guide to Agile Project Management approaches, tools, and techniques. This book shows you how to complete and implement projects more quickly and efficiently.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to develop and implement software projects in weeks instead of months.
  • The practical context for understanding and apply Agile techniques, moving from theory into actual practice.
  • Learn, when to use Agile and how to avoid common pitfalls.
  • This book shows you how to apply the principles in real-world situations for faster, more accurate development through this agile project management.
  • How to define the product vision and product roadmap.


Agile Project Management QuickStart Guide: A Simplified Beginners Guide To Agile Project Management
Author: Ed Stark
Published at: 17/09/2014
ISBN: 1502393468
The Agile Project Management QuickStart Guide from Clydebank Business dives into the core mechanics and intricacies (along with the many variations and spin-offs) of Agile Project Management while maintaining a beginner-friendly approach.

What You Will Learn:
  • Learn, origins of Agile methodology.
  • The case studies through Agile Project Management.
  • The agile implementation techniques through this project management.
  • How to use agile to improve not just productivity and product quality, but also employee morale.
  • How to assess scrum and the many other variations of agile to determine the best fit for your organization.





The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile: Principles and Practices for an Adaptive Approach
Author: Charles G. Cobb
Published at: 27/01/2015
ISBN: 1118991044
This book will help project managers unravel a lot of the confusion that exists; develop a totally new perspective to see Agile and traditional plan-driven project management principles and practices in a new light as complementary to each other rather than competitive; and learn to develop an adaptive approach to blend those principles and practices together in the right proportions to fit any situation.

What You Will Learn:
  • How to improve project outcomes in any project.
  • This book contains real-world case studies.
  • Able to learn enterprise-level agile frameworks that facilitate hands-on learning as well as an in-depth discussion of the principles behind both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management practices.
  • Learn an objective approach that helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of agile methodology.
  • The differences between agile methodology and other methodology.
  • Includes a more thorough level of understanding the agile methodology.



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