This practical book demonstrates how entire organizations—from product managers and engineers to marketers and executives—can put Agile to work. Author Matt LeMay explains Agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice. Examples from a wide variety of organizations, including small nonprofits and global financial enterprises, bring to life the on-the-ground realities of Agile across industries and functions. Understand exactly what Agile is and why it matters Use Agile to address your organization’s specific needs and goals Take customer centricity from theory into practice Stop wasting time in "report and critique" meetings and start making better decisions Create a harmonious cycle of learning, collaborating, and delivering Learn from Agile experts at companies like IBM, Spotify, and Coca-Cola

    But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams.Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

    A pocket-sized overview of roles, artifacts and the sprint cycle, adapted from the bestseller The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson

    You open the box and right on top is a quick-start guide. Being a novice, you follow the guide, and quickly get up and running. As you become more experienced, the other box contents address common advanced issues you'd face, like right-sizing teams, estimation, hitting deadlines, transitioning from Scrum or Waterfall, deploying components and services, and using Kanban within larger organizations.Real-world experience from a direct practitioner working on Xbox and Xbox.comA concise, pragmatic, and easy-to-read guide with clear, fresh, and hard-won guidanceUsing Kanban within larger organizations - how to deal with upper management, planning, and dependencies

    Mainstream agile approaches that are indeed suitable for small projects require significant tailoring for larger, complex enterprise projects. In "Disciplined Agile Delivery," Scott W. Ambler and Mark Lines introduce IBM's breakthrough Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework, which describes how to do this tailoring. DAD applies a more disciplined approach to agile development by acknowledging and dealing with the realities and complexities of a portfolio of interdependent program initiatives. Ambler and Lines show how to extend Scrum with supplementary agile and lean strategies from Agile Modeling (AM), Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Unified Process (UP), and other proven methods to provide a hybrid approach that is adaptable to your organization's unique needs. They candidly describe what practices work best, why they work, what the trade-offs are, and when to consider alternatives, all within the context of your situation. "Disciplined Agile Delivery "addresses agile practices across the entire lifecycle, from requirements, architecture, and development to delivery and governance. The authors show how these best-practice techniques fit together in an end-to-end process for successfully delivering large, complex systems--from project initiation through delivery. Coverage includesScaling agile for mission-critical enterprise endeavorsAvoiding mistakes that drive poorly run agile projects to chaosEffectively initiating an agile projectTransitioning as an individual to agileIncrementally building consumable solutionsDeploying agile solutions into complex production environmentsLeveraging DevOps, architecture, and other enterprise disciplinesAdapting your governance strategy for agile projects Based on facts, research, and extensive experience, this book will be an indispensable resource for every enterprise software leader and practitioner--whether they're seeking to optimize their existing agile/Scrum process or improve the agility of an iterative process.

    However, with Scrum's lack of prescribed rules, the friction of change can be challenging as people struggle to break from old project management habits. In this book, agile-process revolution leader Ken Schwaber takes you through change management--for your organizational and interpersonal processes--explaining how to successfully adopt Scrum across your entire organization.A cofounder of Scrum, Ken draws from decades of experience, answering your questions through case studies of proven practices and processes. With them, you'll learn how to adopt--and adapt--Scrum in the enterprise. And gain profound levels of transparency into your development processes.Discover how to:Evaluate the benefits of adopting Scrum in any size organization Initiate an enterprise transition project Implement a single, prioritized Product Backlog Organize effective Scrum teams using a top-down approach Adapt and apply solutions for integrating engineering practices across multiple teams Shorten release times by managing high-value increments Refine your Scrum practices and help reduce the length of Sprints

    Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute. This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain of Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower. Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines--called kata--that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation. The book also reaches beyond Toyota to explain issues of human behavior in organizations and provide specific answers to questions such as: How can we make improvement and adaptation part of everyday work throughout the organization? How can we develop and utilize the capability of everyone in the organization to repeatedly work toward and achieve new levels of performance? How can we give an organization the power to handle dynamic, unpredictable situations and keep satisfying customers? Mike Rother explains how to improve our prevailing management approach through the use of two kata: Improvement Kata--a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter; and Coaching Kata: a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure it motivates their ways of thinking and acting. With clear detail, an abundance of practical examples, and a cohesive explanation from start to finish, Toyota Kata gives executives and managers at any level actionable routines of thought and behavior that produce superior results and sustained competitive advantage.

    He draws ideas from three very useful intellectual pools: classical management practices, Agile methods, and lean product development. By combining the strengths of these three approaches, he has produced something that works better than any one in isolation." -From the Foreword by Don Reinertsen, President of Reinertsen & Associates; author of Managing the Design Factory; and leading expert on rapid product development Effective requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for serious application development. Until now, however, requirements and Agile methods have rarely coexisted peacefully. For many enterprises considering Agile approaches, the absence of effective and scalable Agile requirements processes has been a showstopper for Agile adoption. In Agile Software Requirements, Dean Leffingwell shows exactly how to create effective requirements in Agile environments. Part I presents the "big picture" of Agile requirements in the enterprise, and describes an overall process model for Agile requirements at the project team, program, and portfolio levels Part II describes a simple and lightweight, yet comprehensive model that Agile project teams can use to manage requirements Part III shows how to develop Agile requirements for complex systems that require the cooperation of multiple teams Part IV guides enterprises in developing Agile requirements for ever-larger "systems of systems," application suites, and product portfolios This book will help you leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements discovery and analysis. You'll find proven solutions you can apply right now-whether you're a software developer or tester, executive, project/program manager, architect, or team leader.

    Drawing on Lopp's management experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland, this book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other. It is a place full of dysfunctional bright people who are in an incredible hurry to find the next big thing so they can strike it rich and then do it all over again. Among these people are managers, a strange breed of people who through a mystical organizational ritual have been given power over your future and your bank account.Whether you're an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what the heck a manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you.

    Each essay distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice, and the new edition now adds more value for leaders and managers of projects everywhere. Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Internet Explorer, and lead program manager for Windows and MSN, Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. Making Things Happen doesn't cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Topics in this new edition include:How to make things happenMaking good decisionsSpecifications and requirementsIdeas and what to do with themHow not to annoy peopleLeadership and trustThe truth about making datesWhat to do when things go wrongComplete with a new forward from the author and a discussion guide for forming reading groups/teams, Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm's reach throughout the life of your project. Coming from the rare perspective of someone who fought difficult battles on Microsoft's biggest projects and taught project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, this is valuable advice indeed. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.

    As the first act of flight, a rocket launch requires an entire set of systems to lift the vehicle into orbit-not just the vehicle itself, but all the systems needed for smoothly moving off the ground into space. Likewise, your project needs its entire set of supporting systems in place to begin a successful journey to delivery. Whatever you call it (project kickoff, bootcamp, inception, or jump start), liftoff gives your team its trajectory, and launches your project. This critical practice informs, inspires, and aligns everyone to a singular purpose: the successful delivery of software. This success is in your hands! Agile veterans Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies teach you how to organize and conduct liftoffs, hold team activities to discover what's most important, and offer a working framework for effective and lightweight agile chartering.

    For this reason, more and more software companies are rapidly turning to Agile development to cope with fast changing markets, unknown or changing product requirements, borderless competition, and to solve complex problems. Yet little has been written to guide product managers through the transition in working with Agile teams and the numerous benefits that it affords. "'Agile Excellence for Product Managers'" is a plain speaking guide on how to work with Agile development teams to achieve phenomenal product success. It covers the why and how of agile development (including Scrum, XP, and Lean, ) the role of product management, release planning, release management, road mapping, creating and prioritizing a product backlog, documentation, product launches, organizational implications and more. It is a must read for product managers making the switch to Agile development as well as product owners and project managers looking for better ways to organize and lead in their companies.

    Less inventory. The highest quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer. In factories around the globe, Toyota consistently raises the bar for manufacturing, product development, and process excellence. The result is an amazing business success story: steadily taking market share from price-cutting competitors, earning far more profit than any other automaker, and winning the praise of business leaders worldwide.The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a renowned authority on Toyota's Lean methods, explains how you can adopt these principles--known as the "Toyota Production System" or "Lean Production"--to improve the speed of your business processes, improve product and service quality, and cut costs, no matter what your industry.Drawing on his extensive research on Toyota, Dr. Liker shares his insights into the foundational principles at work in the Toyota culture. He explains how the Toyota Production System evolved as a new paradigm of manufacturing excellence, transforming businesses across industries. You'll learn how Toyota fosters employee involvement at all levels, discover the difference between traditional process improvement and Toyota's Lean improvement, and learn why companies often think they are Lean--but aren't.

    But being a great ScrumMaster, one who truly embodies the principles of servant-leadership and helps move a team to the high performance levels possible with Scrum, is much harder and much more elusive. In his over ten years of coaching numerous Scrum teams, the highly-respected and experienced Scrum coach Geoff Watts has identified patterns that separate a good ScrumMaster from a great one. In this book, he not only illustrates these patterns through stories of his own experiences and those of the many Scrum teams he has encountered but offers practical guidance for you on your own path to greatness.In this book you will learn:The skills and characteristics of great ScrumMastersHow to generate, maintain and increase engagement from the teamHow to increase the effectiveness of the Scrum meetings, such as retrospectives and daily scrums.How to foster a more creative and collaborative teamHow to increase the performance of the teamHow to know when you are a successful ScrumMaster\Scrum Mastery is for practicing ScrumMasters who want to develop themselves into a great servant-leader capable of taking their teams beyond simple process compliance.Comments on the bookMike Cohn, in his foreword for the book, said:"Most books rehash well-trod territory and I don’t finish them any wiser. I am positive I will be referring back to this book for many years" Roman Pichler, author of Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products That Customers Love said:"I am thoroughly impressed with how comprehensive and well-written the book is. It will be indispensable for many people"Jean Tabaka, Agile Fellow, Rally Software:"Geoff brings us a personal and inspired peak into what truly moves us from good to great: great in how we serve; great in how we lead; great in how we create mastery in our teams and organizations; and, great in how we recognize the impediments to our own growth to greatness. Scrum mastery is a skill that can be honed and Geoff gives us rich tools to sharpen our craft."

    The book emphasizes that we all contain the ingredients for leadership, though some elements are better developed than others. "Anyone can improve as a leader simply by building the strength of our weakest elements, " author Gerald M. Weinberg writes. "Mr. Universe doesn't have more muscles than I do, just better developed ones."On one level, the book is an extremely down-to-earth, how-to guide. On a second, it is a set of parables, full of analogies that stick in the mind -- the art of management taught through stories about pinball, tinkertoys, and electric blankets. On yet another level, this is a book about the philosophy and psychology of managing technical projects. On every level, the author brings these entertaining and enlightening elements together to teach you the essentials of leadership.You'll learn how to-- master your fear of becoming a leader-- be creative in solving problems-- motivate people while maintaining quality-- gain organizational power-- plan personal change.-- Whether you manage people, are managed by people, or just want to change the way you interact with others, this book is about success. How to plan it, how to make it happen -- Becoming a Technical Leader shows you how to do it!