The Human Side Of Agile

As an Agile team leader, your biggest challenge is also your biggest asset. The human side of Agile is tricky. It's the least manageable, understood, and appreciated asset in an Agile environment. Even if your customers are reasonably happy and your developers seem to be doing okay, you know your team is capable of more: delivering great products and staying ahead of ever-changing demands. You need a team that's self-organized, energetic, and flexible, even in tough situations. But how do you build it and lead it? Whether you're a ScrumMaster, project manager, functional manager, or team leader, you want to feel good about using Agile and to create the conditions for great results. But the project management skills you honed in traditional environments don't always apply to the role of Agile team leader. The Human Side of Agile fills this gap, guiding you to: Establish yourself as a confident and capable leader who adds value Build and lead an engaged team that can handle almost any challenge Cultivate collaboration and a continuous improvement mind-set Reap the full benefits of Agile in the real world with real people "I just found the next must-read book for our entire leadership team." "Tricia Broderick, Director of Development, TechSmith" "This book is up there with Peopleware, with concrete examples you can use immediately." "Dave Rooney, Sherpa, Shopify" "Agile teams need effective leaders who 'get' the people stuff. Without that you're merely going through the Agile motions." "Scott W. Ambler, co-creator of Disciplined Agile Delivery" While readable from cover to cover, the book is written as practical answers to the 80+ most relevant and pressing questions that team leaders ask, such as: "How Can I Help the Team Buy In?" "What If I Can't Work Full-Time as the Team's Leader?" "What Actions Will Build the Team's Trust in Me?" "How Can I Mitigate the Damage of Performance Reviews?" "What If a Member Doesn't Fit With the Team?" "How Can We Focus on Our Work With So Many Meetings?" "How Do I Get Stakeholders and Managers on My Side?" "How Can I Make Changes Stick?" "How Do We Avoid Reverting to Old Behaviors?" (Click on Look Inside to browse the complete table of contents.) The book's forewords are by Jim Highsmith and Christopher Avery. Gil Broza, founder and chief specialist at 3P Vantage, has successfully mentored Agile leaders and their teams since 2004. Gil's guidance helps professionals adopt effective, humane, and responsible approaches to software development.

The XP conference series established in 2000 was the first conference dedicated to agile processes in software engineering. The idea of the conference is to offer a unique setting for advancing the state of the art in the research and practice of agile processes. This year’s conference was the ninth consecutive edition of this international event. The conference has grown to be the largest conference on agile software development outside North America. The XP conference enjoys being one of those conferences that truly brings practitioners and academics together. About 70% of XP participants come from industry and the number of academics has grown steadily over the years. XP is more of an experience rather than a regular conference. It offers several different ways to interact and strives to create a truly collaborative environment where new ideas and exciting findings can be presented and shared. For example, this year’s open space session, which was “a conference within a conference”, was larger than ever before. Agile software development is a unique phenomenon from several perspectives.

Are you frustrated or disenchanted by the results of your Agile approach? Does Agile sound like a good idea, but you're not sure how to explain it beyond roles, practices, and meetings? Is your team going through the motions, but it's still business as usual? The missing piece is the Agile mind-set -- the thinking that makes Agile processes work. This book is your compass for the Agile journey. Without prescribing any process, practice, or tool, it will show you how practitioners approach: Deciding what to work on Planning and doing the work Engaging people and performing as teams Working better Pragmatic and dogma-free, this book will help you understand what it means to be Agile and how to bring others along. I want to give this book to every executive and manager who asks why the transition is taking so long. I also recommend it for all Agile practitioners as a valuable source of insight beyond the processes and techniques described in other books. -Roger Brown, Agile Coach, Agile Crossing Gil Broza is a kindred spirit to the pioneers of the Agile movement. He reminds us of the core values, principles, and behaviors of this enduring effort to bring joy and delight to producing software. To those new to the pursuit, he brings a lantern for the journey. -Rich Sheridan, CEO, Menlo Innovations The book's forewords are by Jim Highsmith and Linda Rising. Gil Broza, founder and principal mentor at 3P Vantage, has been supporting Agile leaders and their teams since 2004. Gil's guidance helps professionals adopt effective, humane, and responsible approaches to software development. His previous book was The Human Side of Agile.

You can't achieve business agility by copying practices from software/IT teams. This practical book, free of jargon and full of non-tech examples, will help you consider, design, start, grow, and sustain an Agile way of working that fits your unique context.

Practical, Proven Tools for Leading and Empowering High-Performing Agile Teams A leader is like a farmer, who doesn’t grow crops by pulling them but instead creates the perfect environment for the crops to grow and thrive. If you lead in organizations that have adopted agile methods, you know it’s crucial to create the right environment for your agile teams. Traditional tools such as Gantt charts, detailed plans, and internal KPIs aren’t adequate for complex and fast-changing markets, but merely trusting employees and teams to self-manage is insufficient as well. In Agile Leadership Toolkit, longtime agile leader Peter Koning provides a practical and invaluable steering wheel for agile leaders and their teams. Drawing on his extensive experience helping leaders drive more value from agile, Koning offers a comprehensive toolkit for continuously improving your environment, including structures, metrics, meeting techniques, and governance for creating thriving teams that build disruptive products and services. Koning thoughtfully explains how to lead agile teams at large scale and how team members fit into both the team and the wider organization. Architect environments that help teams learn, grow, and flourish for the long term Get timely feedback everyone can use to improve Co-create goals focused on the customer, not the internal organization Help teams brainstorm and visualize the value of their work to the customer Facilitate team ownership and accelerate team learning Support culture change, and design healthier team habits Make bigger changes faster This actionable guide is for leaders at all levels—whether you’re supervising your first agile team, responsible for multiple teams, or lead the entire company. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Agile Project Delivery reviews how different Agile methods can be applied to project delivery in complex corporate environments beyond the Agile Manifesto’s original scope of software development. Taking readers through a typical project lifecycle, the text demonstrates how Agile techniques can be applied to each phase of a project using valuable tools and examples. Agile Project Delivery covers various approaches that are used across the many methodologies and frameworks that are part of the Agile family, including Scrum, XP, and Crystal, as well as some of Agile’s influences, such as Lean and Kanban. Agile Project Delivery also provides readers with advanced instructions for using Atlassian’s industry-leading Agile software, Jira. Bridging the gap between Agile methodology and application, this concise guide features practical delivery approaches, engaging case studies, useful templates to assist in Agile application, and chapter discussion questions to reinforce understanding on how to harness the benefits of Agile. With a focus on settings outside of software development and an accessible, pragmatic approach, Agile Project Delivery is an invaluable resource for students in any project management course, as well as for both aspiring and experienced project practitioners.

Are you attracted by the promises of agile methods but put off by the fanaticism of many agile texts? Would you like to know which agile techniques work, which ones do not matter much, and which ones will harm your projects? Then you need Agile!: the first exhaustive, objective review of agile principles, techniques and tools. Agile methods are one of the most important developments in software over the past decades, but also a surprising mix of the best and the worst. Until now every project and developer had to sort out the good ideas from the bad by themselves. This book spares you the pain. It offers both a thorough descriptive presentation of agile techniques and a perceptive analysis of their benefits and limitations. Agile! serves first as a primer on agile development: one chapter each introduces agile principles, roles, managerial practices, technical practices and artifacts. A separate chapter analyzes the four major agile methods: Extreme Programming, Lean Software, Scrum and Crystal. The accompanying critical analysis explains what you should retain and discard from agile ideas. It is based on Meyer’s thorough understanding of software engineering, and his extensive personal experience of programming and project management. He highlights the limitations of agile methods as well as their truly brilliant contributions — even those to which their own authors do not do full justice. Three important chapters precede the core discussion of agile ideas: an overview, serving as a concentrate of the entire book; a dissection of the intellectual devices used by agile authors; and a review of classical software engineering techniques, such as requirements analysis and lifecycle models, which agile methods criticize. The final chapters describe the precautions that a company should take during a transition to agile development and present an overall assessment of agile ideas. This is the first book to discuss agile methods, beyond the brouhaha, in the general context of modern software engineering. It is a key resource for projects that want to combine the best of established results and agile innovations.