Leading Agile Teams

I once... took an Agile course provided by good trainer Doug Rose. The training was nice but I decided to profound my knowledge and bought this book. And it was the right decision. This book contains so much useful topics! I believe I will come back to this book from time to time.

A lot of information to swallow, but other than this, the book covers Agile fairly well.

I wanted to share the fact that I found this book most profound and insightful. It brought back my previous Agile teachings and grounded my understanding of the Agile workings. I especially found it helpful in the structure applied, to tell us, tell us again, and tell us what was told us. Repetition was applied with skill and universally across all the Agile concepts. Of special interest to me were the field notes - like case studies in an MBA business course, which helps one to see into the reason for the Agile structure and tasks. My appreciation as to the challenge of change and the pitfalls of transition was significantly expanded. Before it was the mechanics and method that I focused on during prior Agile training. What this book provides is a change of perspective, of expectation, and of culture necessary for the business to accept Agile. Transparency is maybe a better way to say transition of responsibility from individual lead to the development team which for us traditional project managers is a bit of a challenge and a bit like a leap of faith off a precipice. Walking us through the change method in this book I found was an immense value in defining Agile roles and responsibilities and how to manage those roles on an Agile project. The challenges for portfolio level management, for CIOs, for PMOs was made with excellent clarity with the recommendation of Agile pilots as a means of transition and demonstration of the worth or value Agile can bring to the organization. I also commend Project Management Institute (PMI) for partnering with this publication in fostering the Agile body of knowledge.

I picked this book up when moving from a data science role to a product owner role in an Agile team. I was looking for a practical guide to leading within an agile environment, and this book delivered. Unlike other Agile training I have received, this book really adds a focus on the institutional dynamics of Agile and how to make it successful in an organization. It compares Agile to traditional project management practices, and openly discusses how external stakeholders may perceive working with an Agile team. I found this to be the most valuable part of the entire book. Agile does not exist in a vacuum. From my experience, as you move from many processes to a few processes, the attention to those processes and the relationships of the people in the organization become much more important. After reading this book, I felt more prepared than ever to tackle those challenges and lead with the purpose of generating value. I will be recommending this book to anyone new to Agile and am glad Doug took the time to distill these ideas down for the rest of us.

I highly recommend this book. In true AGILE spirit, the workbook-like format is ideal for serious study or as a handy reference. I have had Doug Rose as an AGILE teacher and this book captures his wonderful ability to demystify AGILE. He is able to clearly explain what is flexible about AGILE and what is not. In my workplace, we have not gone "full blown" AGILE, but try to use some of the primary techniques and methods to improve project delivery. I found the chapter on "Working Like an AGILE Team" most helpful in this regard. This book skillfully addresses a wide range of practices from how to introduce AGILE into an organization, to how to run AGILE teams all given by one of the premier coaches out there. AGILE is fast growing in popularity far beyond software development. If you are considering AGILE, or trying to make your current team better, this book is, without a doubt, the place to start.

Doug Rose is one of, if not the best, Project Management instructors I've had the privilege of learning from. With that in mind, it's no small feat that he's been able to successfully incorporate his engaging and thorough teaching methods into a work on Agile. In my experience, Agile and its related terms get thrown around a lot without sufficient consideration of their meaning, but Doug lays out the origin of the terms/concepts and what makes them so valuable. The book is very accessible: included tips, side notes, and illustrations, rather than being gimmicky, successfully reinforce the lessons of each chapter. It's also a very practical book: instead of laying out a Platonic PM ideal, it calls out areas where one might have difficulty implementing Agile concepts, such as meeting organization and inter-team communication. Highly recommended.

This book gave me the the tools and the knowledge I needed to successfully organize my agile team!

This is a book you should consider buying. The “Why Should You Read This Book” section states some of the book’s goals shownng from a team’s perspective how to in a practical manner, implement and align agile to your organization. It meets these objectives using an easy to read style. The first half of the book explains what agile is and how it interfaces with organizations and the later how to implement and continually improve agile methodologies. For me the most important part of this book is that it addresses the “change management aspect” of adopting agile, from interfacing with development managers and PMOs to re-positioning (up) the classical PM position so that it adds true value. For whatever reason I was not able to download the support materials from the website.

El libro fue un regalo, en cuestión del servicio, llego acorde a los tiempos y en perfecto estado.

Easy to digest. Clear examples. Perfect accompaniment to the Agile PM course on Lynda.com

A well written lively summary, makes a good regular reference to stay on my toes when thinking about Agile. It is now constantly with me either to refer to it or to get a quick refresh.

The book clearly explained the agile process, in particular the scrum framework. It provided detailed information of the framework, obstacles to be aware of when implementing agile in your organization and tips to overcome the obstacles. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of implementing agile in their organization.

This reconciled my PMI training with an agile framework in very practical ‘learn by doing’ methods