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Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)

Ken Schwaber

Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) Ken Schwaber Amazon Price: $34.19
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Handbook with Case Studies 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

There's plenty of books on SCRUM - and finding the right one is a tough job.

This book is what you're looking for if you want a basic introduction and examples of applications - because there's plenty of case studies. SCRUM techniques are described and then discussed by resort to case studies, helping the lessons become more applicable to you.

The end result is a good SCRUM Manual for a more experienced Project Manager or IT professional. It's not a book that's pick-up-and-learn basics - its a book on theory, philosophy, and applications for people who have been there.

If you need a first SCRUM book, and want to get the most out of one book as possible, this is definitely a good choice. It's also an excellent book to have to bone up on theory and real-life applications. Finally, it's a definite "lender" that you'll pass around the office.

Editorial Review:

Apply the principles of Scrum, one of the most popular agile programming methods, to software project management—and focus your team on delivering real business value. Author Ken Schwaber, a leader in the agile process movement and a co-creator of Scrum, brings his vast expertise to helping you guide the product and software development process more effectively and efficiently. Help eliminate the ambiguity into which so many software projects are borne, where vision and planning documents are essentially thrown over the wall to developers. This high-level reference describes how to use Scrum to manage complex technology projects in detail, combining expert insights with examples and case studies based on Scrum. Emphasizing practice over theory, this book explores every aspect of using Scrum, focusing on driving projects for maximum return on investment.

The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility (Agile Software Development Series)

Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick

The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility (Agile Software Development Series) Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick Amazon Price: $35.37
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When software development teams move to agile methods, experienced project managers often struggle—doubtful about the new approach and uncertain about their new roles and responsibilities. In this book, two long-time certified Project Management Professionals (PMPRs) and Scrum trainers have built a bridge to this dynamic new paradigm. They show experienced project managers how to successfully transition to agile by refocusing on facilitation and collaboration, not “command and control.”

The authors begin by explaining how agile works: how it differs from traditional “plan-driven” methodologies, the benefits it promises, and the real-world results it delivers. Next, they systematically map the Project Management Institute’s classic, methodology-independent techniques and terminology to agile practices. They cover both process and project lifecycles and carefully address vital issues ranging from scope and time to cost management and stakeholder communication. Finally, drawing on their own extensive personal experience, they put a human face on your personal transition to agile--covering the emotional challenges, personal values, and key leadership traits you’ll need to succeed.

Coverage includes

  • Relating the PMBOKR Guide ideals to agile practices: similarities, overlaps, and differences
  • Understanding the role and value of agile techniques such as iteration/release planning and retrospectives
  • Using agile techniques to systematically and continually reduce risk
  • Implementing quality assurance (QA) where it belongs: in analysis, design, defect prevention, and continuous improvement
  • Learning to trust your teams and listen for their discoveries
  • Procuring, purchasing, and contracting for software in agile, collaborative environments
  • Avoiding the common mistakes software teams make in transitioning to agile
  • Coordinating with project management offices and non-agile teams
  • “Selling” agile within your teams and throughout your organization

For every project manager who wants to become more agile.

Part I An Agile Overview 7

Chapter 1 What is "Agile"? 9

Chapter 2 Mapping from the PMBOKR Guide to Agile 25

Chapter 3 The Agile Project Lifecycle in Detail 37

Part II The Bridge: Relating PMBOKR Guide Practices to Agile Practices 49

Chapter 4 Integration Management 51

Chapter 5 Scope Management 67

Chapter 6 Time Management 83

Chapter 7 Cost Management 111

Chapter 8 Quality Management 129

Chapter 9 Human Resources Management 143

Chapter 10 Communications Management 159

Chapter 11 Risk Management 177

Chapter 12 Procurement Management 197

Part III Crossing the Bridge to Agile 215

Chapter 13 How Will My Responsibilities Change? 217

Chapter 14 How Will I Work with Other Teams Who Aren't Agile? 233

Chapter 15 How Can a Project Management Office Support Agile? 249

Chapter 16 Selling the Benefits of Agile 265

Chapter 17 Common Mistakes 285

Appendix A Agile Methodologies 295

Appendix B Agile Artifacts 301

Glossary 321

Bibliography 327

Index 333

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Agile Software Development Series)

Jim Highsmith

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Agile Software Development Series) Jim Highsmith Amazon Price: $43.52
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Good on principles, but practices could be more dev-related 4 out of 5 stars.
15 of 17 people found this review helpful.

This book is a thoroughly enjoyable read, from the emphasis on principles, the excellent job navigating the difficult territory of the line between prescribed process and anarchy, and the stages a team goes through as it embraces an agile style of development. I even thought that the hypothetical story added a nice element of repetition to each section that helped drive home the main points.

The one thing I would've liked was for this book to get off the fence and decide to be software-related. Almost every example is software related (except for the basketball analogy that got beaten to death...), but it goes out of the way not to specify software practices because this is about arbitrary project management. The book's in the "Agile Software Development Series" and the author is primarily a software consultant. I'd prefer it stuck to software rather than trying to go for broader appeal because there were several practice areas where detail was elided on that basis and could've really helped make the practices more concrete.

Also, it would've been nice to have a little grid mapping up common-day software development methodologies like Scrum, XP, FDD, and DSDM against the practices in the book. I tried to do it in my head, but once you get past 5x5, it's something that should've been provided.

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders (Agile Software Development Series)

Jean Tabaka

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders (Agile Software Development Series) Jean Tabaka Amazon Price: $42.70
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Collaboration Explained establishes the importance of collaboration in agile software development projects through the Agile Manifesto. It reviews the fundamentals of collaboration: what the primary collaboration roles, what the primary collaboration events are; what the fundamental collaboration techniques are that you can apply in any of the roles to any of these events; what to do for distributed, virtual teams for collaboration; and what guidelines to follow to conduct any of the key collaboration activities in your projects. The book's unique edge rests in its clarity around collaboration techniques, presented as straightforward, practical steps, similar to the simple approaches presented by other agile books around project planning and programming techniques. While other books confirm collaboration as critical to project success, they don't provide the real "how to" steps to their readers for accomplishing this important component. Some books, such as Jim Highsmith's "Adaptive Software Development" have given a great deal of emphasis to collaboration within their particular methodology.This book takes that importance and applies it both broadly and crisply across the variety of agile methodologies.

Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results (Coad Series)

David J. Anderson

Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results (Coad Series) David J. Anderson Amazon Price: $51.04
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

IF... 3 out of 5 stars.
16 of 18 people found this review helpful.

Abraham Lincoln once asked something like, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" The answer is four. "Just because you call a tail a leg doesn't make it so." Just because you want to call some development practice "Agile" doesn't make it so. In this book, David Anderson makes a case for calling Theory of Constraints the underlying definition of Agile software development practices. The principle tie is that a key measure in the Theory of Constraints is called Throughput; the amount of value delivered to the customer. Agile methods pride themselves as delivering value to the customer quickly. Based on the Theory of Constraints definition, the Feature Driven Development (FDD) method, Anderson's personal expertise, turns out to be the most Agile of all.
In making the case for the Theory of Constraints based approach, Anderson has given us a lot of formulas and metrics for looking at software projects. This is the most thorough treatment of the subject I have seen yet. I wasn't fully satisfied with the metrics as I felt the book didn't deal with the biggest problem in metrics, the problem of characterizing the measure. To do good metrics, you have to be very clear on what you are measuring, the characterization problem. Without that, all the formulas, graphs, and trends are pretty much useless. Most of the book dealt with the problem by saying, "If you could measure `X', then..." I got really tired of all the Ifs in the book.
In fact, I am not sure I should like this book or not. I found myself half of the time saying to myself, "Hmm, that is a interesting idea," and the other half saying, "I don't think so." Perhaps it was all the Ifs, perhaps it was the repetition. I am glad to say at the end of the book Anderson does appear to have the intelligence to note that one size does not fit all and does a nice job of suggesting where the best choices in software development approaches might be.
So, who should read this book? Well, if you like Donald Reinertsen's and Eliyahu Goldratt's work and live in the software world, this book is for you. If you have to teach Agile seminars to software professionals (like me), then this should be on your reading list as well. If you are general software project manager or developer who is looking to improve the way you do software development, then I would probably pass on this book. Not that the ideas are all wrong but you probably will get lost along the way. If...

Editorial Review:

This book is certainly about software development management, but it is also a book about business. Managers can no longer afford to discuss these two topics independently. This book is meant to eliminate the seat-of-the-pants intuition and rough approximations that have been far too prevalent in software development management. The growing popularity of agile methods has shown that a healthy balance between strict process and individual flexibility can be achieved. David Anderson takes it a step farther, and explains how the healthy balance of agility can help businesses become more profitable. The result is a book that will allow managers to foster teams that produce better software, less expensively, on time, and with fewer defects.

Agile Project Management: How to Succeed in the Face of Changing Project Requirements

Gary Chin

Agile Project Management: How to Succeed in the Face of Changing Project Requirements Gary Chin Amazon Price: $25.70
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In a fast-paced environment filled with uncertainty, successfully completing projects on time can feel like running an obstacle course. An emphasis on speed often forces project teams to make decisions without crucial data, leading to frequent changes of direction once more information becomes known. If people aren't light on their feet, complicated projects can easily get tripped up.

Agile Project Management gives readers the strategies they need to take charge of urgent projects that involve unique resources and elements of uncertainty. The book offers an improvement upon classical project management processes by tying project processes more directly to the ever-changing requirements of business objectives -- achieving improved flexibility and response time. Filled with examples showing how to implement agile PM into all project situations, the book demonstrates how to develop an appropriate and supportive infrastructure and environment, and reviews the roles of the project manager, general management, and the project team. Agile Project Management is the ultimate method for achieving superior results in an accelerated and changing environment.

Agile Portfolio Management

Jochen Krebs

Agile Portfolio Management Jochen Krebs Amazon Price: $25.54
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Find out how your company s full project portfolio can benefit from the principles of agility from an expert on agile processes. Agile software development is now more popular than ever, but agility doesn t need to stop there. This guide takes a big-picture look at how portfolio managers and project managers can make use of proven agile development methods to increase organizational efficiency.

It can be difficult for companies to manage multiple development teams and to ensure that they are in line with evolving corporate strategies. Agile project-management methods help you build more flexible processes that invite feedback and collaboration, adapt to change, and gain better project insights. They enable project teams to execute corporate strategy and top-level managers to make sound decisions. This guide delivers practical, real-world strategies for implementing agile methods across your organization. Learn best practices for reassessing your company-wide processes; successfully coordinating multiple software teams without imposing a rigid, top-down structure; developing clear roles and responsibilities; and transitioning to an agile enterprise.

Key Book Benefits:

Delivers practical, real-world guidance on bringing agile software development methods to your entire enterprise Provides specific suggestions for improving processes, developing clear roles, and making decisions Features a survey of popular agile project management methods

Managing Agile Projects

Managing Agile Projects Amazon Price: $32.25
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Are you being asked to manage a project with:

- unclear requirements?
- high levels of change?
- a team using Extreme Programming or other Agile Methods?

If you are a project manager or team leader who is interested in learning the secrets of successfully controlling and delivering agile projects, then you have come to the right place.

From learning how agile projects are different from traditional projects, to detailed guidance on a number of agile management techniques and how to introduce them onto your own projects, we have the insider secrets from some of the industry experts – the visionaries who developed the agile methodologies in the first place.

Other books on the topic present a single management method for agile projects; this one, however, presents management techniques that are common to all agile development methods. So, whether you are using Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Feature-Driven Development (FDD), one of the Crystal Methods, Lean Development, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), or any other agile method, this book is written for you.

Managing Agile Projects contains well over 400 pages packed full of insider tips on how to make these methods work for you. Chapters focus on topics critical to the success of projects facing changing requirements and seemingly impossible deadlines. Chapters cover topics such as engineering unstable requirements, active stakeholder participation, conducting agile meetings, extreme testing, agile documentation, and how to use agile methods under fixed price contracts. The book also provides information to help you plan your agile projects better to avoid some common pitfalls introduced by the fast pace and concurrent activities common to agile development methods. This book will show you the tricks to keeping agile projects under control.

You can apply some of the techniques in this book to your current project, right now. Why wait any longer?

Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for Extreme Programming and the Unified Process

Scott W. Ambler, Ron Jeffries

Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for Extreme Programming and the Unified Process Scott W. Ambler, Ron Jeffries Amazon Price: $34.51
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

If you live in a world of too much documentation, read this 3 out of 5 stars.
10 of 13 people found this review helpful.

For those few places left that steep themselves in documentation and don't have a legally-required reason to do so (do they exist?), this book should help motivate why producing too much documentation and doing too much modeling up front can hurt rather than help. Even for a company that sees itself as lightweight, he's got some rough assessments you can do to see if you're overdoing things, which were relevant even where I work.

The only bad thing is that it was a very theory and ideal oriented book. It didn't contain concrete examples of what Agile Modeling would look like on a real project, how it would feel, and how what models were produced would evolve. This made it a bit difficult to verify my interpretation of the book.

Editorial Review:

The first book to cover Agile Modeling, a new modeling technique created specifically for XP projects eXtreme Programming (XP) has created a buzz in the software development community-much like Design Patterns did several years ago. Although XP presents a methodology for faster software development, many developers find that XP does not allow for modeling time, which is critical to ensure that a project meets its proposed requirements. They have also found that standard modeling techniques that use the Unified Modeling Language (UML) often do not work with this methodology. In this innovative book, Software Development columnist Scott Ambler presents Agile Modeling (AM)-a technique that he created for modeling XP projects using pieces of the UML and Rational's Unified Process (RUP). Ambler clearly explains AM, and shows readers how to incorporate AM, UML, and RUP into their development projects with the help of numerous case studies integrated throughout the book.

Configuration Management Principles and Practice (Agile Software Development Series)

Anne Mette Jonassen Hass

Configuration Management Principles and Practice (Agile Software Development Series) Anne Mette Jonassen Hass Amazon Price: $45.09
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A good insight into Configuration Management 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This volume should be prescribed reading for all IT professionals. Everybody but everybody has an opinion on the merits or otherwise of Configuration Management, but a better understanding would help us all. People not actively part of Configuration Management [CM] will then say, "Yes, it is both more important and more involved that I had thought hitherto".

There are five parts to the book; what is CM, the data required for CM, roles within CM, CM in practice and improving CM. The last three are probably the more interesting, but without the first two, it is talking into a vacuum. Throughout, there is emphasis that CM is a tool to be used, and should not become a priority in its own right. Good CM should provide benefits; unfortunately, those who receive the benefits are not always those who have paid the cost (in terms of extra effort and/or information that is required of them).

In the first two sections, there is a lot of material that seems repetitive. An example of this is material regarding the naming of configuration items, deliveries, etc. However, this is also an advantage, as chapters or parts of chapters can be read in isolation. I particularly like the use of the same examples in various parts of the text. When referred to, there is usually a diagram, and this is in text, rather than referring to another page in another chapter. Table 15-1 is the same as table 6-1. In books where the diagram is NOT repeated, but the reader referred back to re-read the other section, they never do!

Fundamental questions about what to include under the control of CM are addressed (although not always prescriptively answered). What should be included in the CM system? Do you include program source and object code, just source code, or source and the compiler? If the compiler is not included, it may not be possible to amend code for old platforms. Similarly, all tools should be potentially under CM control. Otherwise, a document written is an obscure word processor format may be available in the future, but not the means to even read it easily?

There is discussion about the need to capture both physical objects (PC's, memory boards) AND electronic objects. In this case, CM can partly overlap with asset management; it is other ways very different from the latter. However, the author stresses the need to know the boundaries of CM; the defining of a software delivery is not the responsibility of the CM team. Similarly, the use of variants is a design decision, not decided or dictated by those in CM. The latter is essentially an administrative task, concentrating on the four cornerstones; identification, storage, change control and status reporting.

The challenges of these four categories are brought out in the latter parts. Most people would agree that documents need to come under CM control at some point. The storage of documents can present challenges, particularly if a master document has many composite parts. There are also needs to take account of cross-references (which may be different to the formal linkages that are reported by the CM tool). Much information can be gathered from the information available through CM. A well-made point is that there is no point in gathering information if no one is going to use it.

Anne Mette's first language is not English, and sometimes this shows. It is difficult to define how this is the case, but sometimes the use of language can be an advantage. Some things are described as being `an inspiration', not an expression that many would necessarily have chosen. That comes across well. However, do not confuse the style with the substance. The latter is the most important, and it is a very good standard.

How do fill a book of 350 pages on CM? Several items are covered that are not exactly mainstream CM, but are very relevant and appropriate to the discussion. The section on `people roles' comes over well, and is part of the selling of CM as a discipline. This section draws on the work of Dr Meredith Belbin, and his nine team roles, applying this specifically to CM.

The last comments are reserved for the final part, allowing the CM process to be part of the overall Process Improvement drive within an organisation. If there is no CM process in place (not to be confused with there being no CM tool in place), it can be difficult to know where to start. An apt comparison is about a centipede thinking about how to walk - too much thought makes for a tangled heap in a ditch, instead of just doing it. The author says go for quick cheap wins, and if possible base any initial procedures on existing practices. This will significantly enhance the chances of success.

CM is a big topic. This volume brings out many of the issues that are involved, and gives guidelines on overcoming some specific challenges. There are practical examples, but these are more in the line of serving suggestions, rather than a fixed menu.

Peter Morgan, Bath, UK (morganp@supanet.com)

Editorial Review:

Configuration management (CM) is frequently misunderstood. This discipline is growing in popularity because it allows project participants to better identify potential problems, manage change, and efficiently track the progress of a software project. CM is not easy, but at the same time, it need not be difficult. This book gives the reader a practical understanding of the complexity and comprehensiveness of the discipline. Many current CM practitioners rely too heavily on commercial CM tools, and fail to understand the concept as a whole. With the deeper knowledge of CM principles taught in this book, readers will be better able to manage and deliver their next project. The book is included in the Agile Software Development Series because there is growing recognition that an effective configuration management strategy is the cornerstone of a truly agile project.

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