A reading list for agilists (or those aspiring)

I have failed everything I’ve ever done in manners both inconsequential and catastrophic. There were times when I failed to learn the lesson taught — and those from which I was wiser having had charted the course.

I’ve always been a science fiction reader — and recently, a writer too — a genre that appeals as a literature of ideas, a catalogue of visions for that which does not exist.

In the following body of agile literature I found a conjunction of these two great loves — the wisdom of failures learned and outlines of what could be.

Thus here I present a shortlist of lighthouses for fellow learners to map out their journey raise their own sails toward greater agility.

Studying to be a Product Owner

• Product Management — Pichler, Roman — The first, last and definitive word on Product Ownership.
• Desirable Characteristics of a Product Owner — Pichler, Roman
• Scaling the Product Owner — Pichler, Roman
• User Stories Applied — Cohn, Mike — The most common pattern of creating Product Backlog Items.
• Mapping Experiences — Kalbach, James
• Articulating Design Decisions — Greever, Tom
• User Story Mapping — Patton, Jeff

Studying to be a Scrum Master

• The Official Scrum Guide — The simple must-read for everyone in a scrum organisation.
• Software in 30 Days — Ken Schwaber
• Our Iceberg is Melting — John Kotter
• Scrum — A Pocket Guide — Gunther Verheyen
• Branch out to both the Product Owner and Scrum Master reading lists above

For Graduates

• The Naked CEO — Alex Malley
• The Decision Book — Mikael Krogerus
• And all of the mindset books, starting with Drive, then The Obstacle and with Grit following.

Mindset for Everyone

Add these to an enterprise library for teams on the journey toward transformation.

• (The Growth) Mindset — Carol Dweck — The secret to enabling any transformation is having people who have a mindset that enables change
• Rising Strong — Brene Brown
• Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence Collection (4 Books) (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) — Daniel Goleman
• Grit — Angela Duckworth — Grit — the characteristic that helps you build skill and apply with with tenacity toward success.
• Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — The secret to human happiness — a combination of challenge and skill
• Drive — Dan Pink — A update to assumptions about organisational popular psychology
• The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday — A modern take on the millenia old philosophy of Stoicism — keeping equanimity in trying times.
• Turn That Ship Around — David Marquet
• Lean In — Sheryl Sandberg
• Empathy — Roman Krznaric
• Start with Why — Simon Sinek — Simple, powerful and often missed.
• The Test Book: 64 Tools to Lead You to Success — Mikael Krogerus
• The Question Book: What Makes You Tick? — Mikael Krogerus

Building Cultures

• Netflix | Extended Book — Patty McCord
• Valve
• Zappos
• No Moss
• 24 Other Culture Books

Building Teams

• Tribal Unity: Getting from Teams by Creating a One Team Culture by Em Campbell-pretty — My go-to book for execute book clubs during agile transformations
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni — must-have for all teams
• Retrospectives — Derby and Larsen — must-have for Scrum Masters, get many copies to help teams scale
• Creating Great Teams — Sandy Mamoli

Running Tactics

• Agile Estimating and Planning — Mike Cohn
• Scrum A Travel Companion — Gunther Verheyen
• Innovation Games — Luke Hohmann
• User Stories Applied — Mike Cohn
• Agile Coaching — Lyssa Adkins
• Developing Scrum — Mike Cohn
• Continuous Delivery — Jez Humble
• Essential Scrum — Rubin, Kenneth S.
• Real–World Kanban — Skarin, Mattias
• Agile Testing — Crispin, Lisa

Principles and Models

• Re-inventing Organizations — Frederick Laloux — Outlines new paragdigms of now humans organise themselves, with great case studies
• Anti-fragile — Nassim Taleb
• Cynefin Framework mini-book — Dan Snowden
• Exponential Organisations — Salim Ismail
• Lean Enterprise — Jez Humble
• The DevOps Handbook — Gene Kim
• The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking — Mikael Krogerus — An information dense reference tome for strategists of every kind
• The Change Book — Fifty models to explain how things happen — Mikael Krogerus

Case Studies

• Coca Cola: Design to Grow — David Butler — A wonderful case study of agile thinking beyond technology
• New Science of Retailing — Fisher and Raman — Specifically for the Zara case study
• Connected Company — David Gray
• Phoenix Project — Gene Kim
• Team of Teams — General Stanley McChrystal
• Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Chouinard — the Patagonia Case Study

Adjacent ideas

• The Toyota Way — Liker
• Lean Product Development — Donald G Reinertsen
• Lean Startup — Eric Reis
• Zero to One — Peter Thiel
• Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days — Jake Knapp

I hope you find this list as valuable as I have. Enjoy!