I want to share with you a list of Project Management books that I’ve enjoyed and found helpful:
One of the most comprehensive agile books, Mike Cohn’s Agile Estimating and Planning is probably the best guide on how to estimate and plan agile projects. It helped me understand in depth the rationale of planning and estimating in an agile way, and also the best practices to realize it.
Favourite quote: “Planning is everything. Plans are nothing.” —Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke”
Scrum Mastery is a book that serves as a reminder on what makes a great Scrum Master. It shows the differences between good and great Scrum Masters and how the latter, as Servant Leaders, build high-performing teams.
The book is highly recommended to practicing Scrum Masters, to those that want to reach a higher level of maturity in their practice or to be inspired with a fresh view on the mission of their role. It could be also useful for other people in the organization, that work with Scrum Masters and want to understand better how a great Scrum Masters contribute for the team and the organization.
Favourite quote: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
One of the most practical books on Project Management, Making Things Happen uses examples and use-cases from Scott Berkun’s years of project management experience at Microsoft. Centered around software development, the author covers real-world situations that occurs in the daily activities of a project: schedules, specifications and requirements, how to figure out what to do, how to make good decisions, how not to annoy people, what to do when things go wrong and others.
Favourite quote: “Without change and the occasional struggle, we can’t learn or grow.”
The story of Scrum, written by one of its creators, Jeff Sutherland. This is not a how-to guide, (for that you should probably start with the Scrum Guide) but mostly is a detailed journey of Scrum, from its beginnings to how it became the standard framework for software development teams.
Favourite quote: “No Heroics. If you need a hero to get things done, you have a problem. Heroic effort should be viewed as a failure of planning.”
As we know, Scrum is easy to understand but hard to master. Mike Cohn is one of the leading thinkers and authors on Agile Software Development and in this excellent book he succeeds to shed light on the best practices for implementing Scrum and offer solutions to the challenges practitioners face when transitioning to Agile.
Favourite quote: “If a project manager can overcome the old habits of directing the team and making decisions for it, it is likely such a project manager can become a good ScrumMaster.”
A small book covering the basics of Scrum, for those that need a quick reference or for those that after reading the Scrum Guide feel the need for more guidance. It covers the most important information needed to get a Scrum certification or to get ready when starting a new Scrum project.
Favourite quote: “Scrum Master, as the promoter of Scrum and self-organization, should consider how to help a team work out their problems themselves and offer any tools, trainings and insights on how best to do this.”
This book is largely a study of a 800 project managers survey, trying to identify the traits of the top 2% (the Alphas), that make them stand out in the eyes of their senior managers, customers and other stakeholders.
Favourite quote: “Until my product is in the customer’s hands, communication is my deliverable.”
Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s engaging book presents us how to drive high-value change throughout a software organization.
Main topics:
Systems thinking: focusing on customers, bringing predictability to demand, and revamping policies that cause inefficiency
Technical excellence: implementing low-dependency architectures, TDD, and evolutionary development processes, and promoting deeper developer expertise
Reliable delivery: managing your biggest risks more effectively, and optimizing both workflow and schedules
Relentless improvement: seeing problems, solving problems, sharing the knowledge
Great people: finding and growing professionals with purpose, passion, persistence, and pride
Aligned leaders: getting your entire leadership team on the same page
Favourite quote: “Your purpose is probably not to develop software. It is a rare customer who wants software; customers want their problems solved. If customers could solve their problems without software, they would be delighted.“
A good book that I’ve used to prepare for the PMI-ACP certification. It provides theoretical information of multiple agile frameworks, practices and tools and how agile can be blended with waterfall in hybrid approaches. I would recommend it only to prepare for PMI’s certifications.
A well written book, Fixing your Scrum deals with the common dysfunctions and challenges that emerge while doing Scrum. Listing a series of anti-patterns such as lacking goals, not having a clear vision, one product, many product backlogs, the superhero scrum master, too many meetings, the authors provide practical solutions on how to overcome them.
Favourite quote: “Want to know the best way to demotivate a development team? Keep them from seeing how their work impacts your customers.”
