Tag Archives: agile

March 23

What you could learn from ‘Effective DevOps’ by Davis & Daniels (2016, 356 pages).

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My advice is not to buy this book unless: You work in a large company that releases software less than one a week You have never heard of, or experienced DevOps I found this book very basic and too highly focused on culture. Much of the book is not aligned with other articles, book or […]

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January 25

What you could learn from ‘Lean vs. Agile vs. Design thinking’ by Gothelf & Seiden (2017, 39 pages)

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Modern product development is rife with frameworks and philosophies. Many books and articles attempt to provide their own interpretation, mainly to sell books. In their book ‘Lean vs. Agile vs. Design, the authors do a great job in explaining the basics of each, and providing a good list of recommendations. The diagram below from Gartner […]

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November 22

How to scale (3 of 5) – Agile (process)

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In the earlier posts, I explored how successful companies scale, and ways to structure product teams.   In this post, I look at execution – how to get code shipped. Modern software development (Agile) differs from historic approaches (waterfall).   Agile is a commonly used term but is often embellished and miss-understood.  It is important to separate […]

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August 03

What you could learn from Scrum 101 by Lowe, Wyllie and Vara (2017, 126 pages)

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Scrum 101 is a refreshingly clear, helpful guide to Scrum.  The book starts by explaining the Agile manifesto and principles directly and thankfully will little interpretation.  The book then situates Scrum within Agile by describing it as a framework for achieving the values and goal of Agile (a great description).  The book also outlines the […]

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July 30

What you could learn from ‘Agile at Scale’ this months HBR (May/Jun 18)

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In brief analysis of the top articles in the most recent Harvard Business Review.

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July 27

What you could learn from ‘Agile at Scale’ this months HBR (May/Jun 18)

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In brief analysis of the top articles in the most recent Harvard Business Review.

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June 15

What you could learn from ‘Scrum A pocket guide’ by Gunther Verheyen (2013, 99 pages)

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What you could learn from ‘Scrum A pocket guide’ by Gunther Verheyen (2013, 99 pages)

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June 04

What you could learn from ‘Accelerate’ by Forsgren, Humble & Kim (2018, 200 pages)

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There is a lot of opinion in the software development industry about what works.  Even though some of the insights are the result of decades of hard-won experience, humans are highly biased and context-dependent – we often think what works in one situation will keep on working, or will work great in an altogether different […]

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January 29

What you could learn from “Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction” by Chris Sims and Hillary Johnson (2012, 46 pages)

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This is the best introduction to Scrum and Agile that I have read.  At 46 pages, if covers all the basics, specifically: The roles of: Product Owner Scrum Master Team Member The key events: Sprint planning Daily stand-up Story generation Sprint review Retrospective Read this book if you want to know the basics, or give […]

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July 29

What you can learn from ‘The Phoenix Project’ by Gene Kim,Kevin Behr & George Spafford (2014, 338 pages)

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How do you ensure that IT supports the business? How does your business transform in the digital age? In the book ‘The Phoenix Project, the authors argue that closer integration of development, operations and risk provide a competitive advantage by enabling the other business functions to succeed.  The authors argue that the ‘Three Ways’ are […]

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July 23

What you can learn from ‘Agile project management for Dummies’ by Mark Layton (2012, 306 pages)

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Being agile is now seen as a requirement for many companies.  Start-ups are agile, innovators are agile, cool companies are agile.  But what does agile mean?  What are the benefits of agile? And, how do you ‘do’ agile? There is a lot of writing about the ‘digital’ way of working, where companies are trying to […]

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July 16

What you can learn from ‘Kanban’ by David Anderson (2010, 240 pages)

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The kanban board (above) could often be found in many start-ups and incubators.  Now kanban boards are becoming more and more common in medium and large companies. Why are more and more companies adopting kanban methodologies, and is there more to Kanban than kanban boards? Dave Anderson’s book ‘Kanban’ answers all these questions and more.  The main […]

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