Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (Addison-Wesley Signature Series

by Jurgen Appelo

In many organizations, management is the biggest obstacle to successful Agile development. Unfortunately, reliable guidance on Agile management has been scarce indeed. Now, leading Agile manager Jurgen Appelo fills that gap, introducing a realistic approach to leading, managing, and growing your Agile team or organization.

 

Writing for current managers and developers moving into management, Appelo shares insights that are grounded in modern complex systems theory, reflecting the intense complexity of modern software development. Appelo’s Management 3.0 model recognizes that today’s organizations are living, networked systems; and that management is primarily about people and relationships.

 

Management 3.0 doesn’t offer mere checklists or prescriptions to follow slavishly; rather, it deepens your understanding of how organizations and Agile teams work and gives you tools to solve your own problems. Drawing on his extensive experience as an Agile manager, the author identifies the most important practices of Agile management and helps you improve each of them.

 

Coverage includes

 

• Getting beyond “Management 1.0” control and “Management 2.0” fads

• Understanding how complexity affects your organization

• Keeping your people active, creative, innovative, and motivated

• Giving teams the care and authority they need to grow on their own

• Defining boundaries so teams can succeed in alignment with business goals

• Sowing the seeds for a culture of software craftsmanship

• Crafting an organizational network that promotes success

• Implementing continuous improvement that actually works

 

Thoroughly pragmatic–and never trendy–Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 helps you bring greater agility to any software organization, team, or project.

 

Genres: Management, Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Software, Programming, Technology

621 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 16, 2010

About the author

Redesigning the future of work—no hype, no hierarchies, no hegemonies. Aiming for open systems, responsible autonomy, and decentralized power.

Jurgen Appelo is a radical synthesist, resolute unfixer, and unabashed rule-breaker. He not only brings together diverse perspectives in organization design and development—he tears them apart and rebuilds them for the Age of AI, without permission.

As an author, speaker, and entrepreneur, Jurgen helps leaders stop managing like it's 2001 and start rewiring their organizations for AI-driven leadership, autonomous digital agents, and algorithmic management. Through stories, games, tools, and practices, he shatters conventional thinking and gets his audience to experiment with human-AI teamwork, anti-fragile structures, and the unpredictable nature of customer and employee experience.

Inc.com recognized him as a Top 50 Leadership Expert and Top 100 Leadership Speaker, but he's most interested in redrawing the boundaries between opposing worldviews: human ingenuity and artificial intelligence, inspiring leadership versus strong governance, organizational stability with relentless innovation, and individual growth fuelling collective success.

His books tackle everything from the role of agile managers (Management 3.0) to change and transformation (How to Change the World), and from employee engagement (Managing for Happiness) to innovation and intrapreneurship (Startup, Scaleup, Screwup). Even his novel Glitches of Gods explores the chaos of human-machine interactions. His latest work, Human Robot Agent, plunges into the AI-powered future of leadership and algorithmic management.

As founder of The unFIX Company (and previously founder of Management 3.0 and co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe network), Jurgen keeps pioneering the future of work.

Reviews

[Jurgen Appelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's my own book. Of course, I like it! :)

[Ricardo Cavalcanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great book. Presents a great model for many aspects of managing software development.
For example, it puts the manager in a position of working together with the team, rather than a position of authority. Nice theoretical references, practical advice and real project storytelling.

Not a 5 star because of the promise of at least 2 good jokes. I couldn't find them. Seriously, there are quite a few weird metaphors and analogies that are very hard to relate to, some extra jokes between parenthesis that only interrupt the line of thought, as well as story fillers that could be left out. Maybe the intention was to make the more pleasant to read. I think without these the book would still be a very nice read.

[Yves Hanoulle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me think.

Jurgen managed to write a book that links the tons of books he has read. Although there were a few moments I did not agree with him, I loved the way this book challenges my thinking. This is the perfect book if you want to know how to create your own answers in this complex world.

[Adriano Jesus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn’t an easy one to read in my opinion. Maybe because I didn’t know Management 3.0 before, even a resume about its pillars. The book brings a detailed and extensive vision of management 3.0.

Because it brings a lot of information including foundation concepts to support the ideas written on it, and many related subjects, I felt difficult to connect with the topic management 3.0 sometimes.

My tips to try to get the best of the book is:

1.0 Try to read a short resume of what is management 3.0 first. An easy one. Reading what is management 3.0 before reading this book will help you connect with the topics of the book.

2.0 Try to understand the chapter about systems and how they work well before advance to the next chapters. The author uses a lot these concepts throughout the entire book.

I gave 4 stars because the author brings a lot of good information and many good references about management and related subjects.

I dint’t give 5 stars, because I felt the necessity of a lighter introduction first of what is management 3.0 and it’s pillars, before to dive into more details. This would enable to connect each detailed topic with the broad idea.

[Romans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely marvellous! A gem with so many takeaways I couldn't read it when I didn't have my highlighter with me. Few works make so much sense throughout the whole book as this one and it's very important to note that it's based on actual research not just random thoughts of a successful manager.

I recommend it to all managers of any industry, team leads and senior software developers.

[Kim Leandersson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book is like reading an executive summary of many other management books and tons of research made in this field. Saves you a lot of time and makes it quite efficient, but at the same time the format becomes a bit special with all the referrals to other sources.

The book itself is good but not great, the author makes good conclusions and have a good way to mix in examples from the normal life. He also uses his own experience in a way that makes the book a bit less heavy to digest.

I especially liked the first 70% of the book, the last chapters got too heavy with line after line attacking me with new theories and links to some source.

Should definitely be recommended to anyone interesting in how agilization affects the organization, the people and the managers.

[Mihnea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on management and more importantly, complexity theory.
The author equivalates management principles with a lot of principles from nature, genetics, mathematics, to show how these describe and translate into organizational behavior, why it's then difficult to accurately predicts this behavior, and what principles can be used, and how they can be implemented to best help organizations in their evolution.

[Taras Fedoruk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a fundamental book about management. Be careful - not about project management, or operational management, or agile coaching - but about management. Full of metaphors and links to other disciplines, it provides a reader with the strong idea of where to look tomorrow to make your team, project or company more successful.

[Olesia Rabei]

Наталю, якщо ти читаєш - то я таки закінчила ту книгу 🤪 і поверну))

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is targeted at Agile management of software development teams but the ideas within it are not specific to them. It is written in a mixture of anecdotes, theories from scientific papers and practical approaches you can take. The target is to present a model which has 6 "views"; Energise people, Empower teams, Align constraints, Develop competence, Grow structure & Improve everything. Here are the things which I noted from each of these views.

Energise people - Innovation is the key to survival for a company, and innovation is the combination of information, knowledge, creativity, motivation, diversity & personality. Here people are key to the system, and people are complex. To energise people they need a creative environment which is safe (where people have freedom and can take risks without consequences), has games (allow people to practice their creative talents), is variation (routine kills creativity), visibility (show off creativity breeds more creativity), on the edge (challenges should be a little scary). Traditional management used extrinsic motivation, e.g. target driven bonuses, however these reduce creativity. Instead creativity is best when it comes from intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivations are to feel competent, to be accepted, curiosity, honor, purpose, autonomy, order, influence, social contact/relatedness & status from challenging work, achievement, personal growth, recognition & responsibility. Additionally "hygiene factors" such as job security, salary, working conditions, etc - these don't motivate people but there absence does demotivate people.

Empower teams - No one person can comprehend an entire project, this is why at planning and daily stand-ups the entire team need to be present. As such the team is the best place to make decisions, not some manager since the team has the most information and understands it the best. As such empowering the team produces both the best results but also allows a company to grow. Telling people what to do just builds up motivational debt, but asking empowers people for their input and sometimes results in a better idea as well as the work actually getting done. Additionally a manager should not step in to make a decision but might help the team make their own decision - the worst thing a manager can do is to think "If I want a job doing properly do it myself" as this just obliterates the empowerment of the team. People or teams can be empowered for different tasks at different levels. The proposed levels go from management take control through to the team take control, these being Tell, Sell, Consult, Agree, Advise, Inquire, Delegate. For different people and different tasks they might have different levels (e.g. spending < £500 might be an inquire but for people in their first 3 months this might be at the consult level). There are different levels of maturity for empowered tasks from the low maturity level with little risk for the company, this could be things such as coding guidelines or internal workshops; through to moderate maturity which would be things such as self-organising the team, getting people involved in interviewing others for the team or potentially developing a new business model; up to a high maturity level where people determine their own salaries, choose their own projects or job title. Sometimes you would not empower an individual to do something but you might empower the team, so collectively they are responsible. Empowerment is built on trust & respect; between a manager and the team, team and a manager, within the team and within yourself - it needs to be built. One way to build trust is to be open and visible, if you tell people as much as possible (even if you think it might not be relevant) then they will do the same and build trust further.

Align constraints - Manage the system, not the people. So we now have a group of creative and empowered people and teams. There are always boundaries, and these boundaries should be tweaked and refined to get the desired outcomes from the team. The role of a leader is to develop the self organising system, protect the system & direct the system. Directing the team is to give it purpose. People have three types of purpose intrinsic, extrinsic and autonomous. The intrinsic purpose of a software team is to create software - without this the team no longer exists. The autonomous purpose for the same team might be to develop "clean code". The extrinsic purpose is imposed by a leader, and this can be for the individual team or company since it is only the leader who can is responsible for the whole system. This extrinsic purpose(s) is the long term vision, for the product the team and/or company as well as the short term mission. These statements should be understandable, concise, memorable, ambitious, actionable, useful, plain, tangible, excitable, and inspiring. Again, a purpose linked to a reward will likely restrict people and reduce creativity.

Develop competence - Growing competencies is key to systems improving. There are multiple ways to grow competencies - self directed, being coached (this does not need to be by a manager), certification (the certificate only attests to your ability at a point in time but the process of certification will give you learning targets), tools (such as check lists), peer review and feedback, supervisors (to check quality), management (to check compliance). Care has to be taken else you get a "what you measure is what you get" approach, and if this is of a sub-system the optimisation of which might be bad for the business as a whole. The dimensions which contribute towards the project are functionality, quality, tools, people, time, process & value so these would give a more holistic view of progress but should be measures at the highest level which they make sense. Competency is a mixture of skill and discipline. Skill is missed out of the agile manifesto, and following which craftsmanship or mastery has been an important topic. Discipline is things such as task board up to date, meetings start on time, code coverage, etc. Skill and discipline are deliverables, where as knowledge or experience is theoretical - people should be rated on their deliverables not on the theoretical. Where possible use relative ratings - how much better are things than the last time, not just how good are things. As with all of agile, people should get feedback quickly. The people who work closely together should provide feedback - not managers who do not work with people continually.

Grow structure - With people being the core of the system, communication is the key to success. Communication is tricky as different people interpret the same thing differently - it is a combination of information, relationship and feedback. Since relationships are key to this whenever a team is forced together the communication will start poorly, as such keeping a team together (even if the project change) is beneficial. Where feedback between team members is poor the communication suffers and the result is unpredictable. The structure of communication should impact the structure of the teams - where communication within the team should be the primary communication. Communication from outside of the team will always be needed but this should be at a slower pace. This has impact on the decision between forming a functional or cross-functional team. Where communication is mostly within a function then a functional team is more optimal but where the communication with with others then a cross-functional team is more optimal. This might also change over time, and it might be worth seconding someone from a functional team to another team to ease communication. Since each team optimises for its own process it is possible that, for example, a functional team might optimise its process so the function is very efficient but this might not be efficient for its users - as such each team should be a value center with other teams as valued customers. For inter-team communication there are two approaches - where all communication goes via management or where teams talk directly. It is mostly the case where teams talking directly is best because of bottlenecks which going via management introduce. The ideal team is one of 3-7 people where members compliment each other in such a way that they get the job done quickly - this is only possible by having a diverse team. It has also been shown that the product developed is a reflection of communication structure of organisations - e.g. have 2 teams working on a compiler and you will get a two parse compiler. So the team needs to be adapted to the product which is being developed. To keep people interested their role should change regularly, so it is best to keep job titles broad to allow flexibility. These broad titles help informal leadership - everyone in the team should take on whatever is needed for the team to function best be it leadership or development. To facilitate this generalised specialists (T people) aid in the team members being able to take on any task required. Build on the communication by connecting people to build relationships and improve communication.

Improve everything - A system is a success until it is not, the best we can do is delay failure - a system has to change to be able to keep up and delay its end. For a system to be changed it has to take into account the current environment the system is in - simply repeating someone else approach to solving a problem will not yield the same results for you as it did for them. Systems can adapted but they also need to explore new ideas as well as anticipate potential shifts - these should be continually being reevaluated to maintain change and prevent failure. The model presented identifies the following steps to improve the system; identify the problem, define the goal of the change, define success metric, identify the improvement, implement the improvement, collect the metric, analyse the results, distill learnings and loop again. This can reach the best peak for this mountain but it might not be the peak of the maintain range - taking radical jumps from one mountain to the next might not land you in the idea place but you can improve from there to get to the top. People naturally don't like change and sometimes the environment needs to be changed to encourage people to try things. To prevent stagnation it is important for teams to try out new approaches to see if they improve things for them - sometimes even by imposing a little pain for stagnation, this then gets teams to want to improve themselves to reach the next peak. There are three strategies for optimal performance. Changes and improvements to existing practices. When starting new projects try out taking the best solutions others teams are using and see if the combination results in a better result. Increase inter-team communication to spread ideas which teams might then pick up on and use. Some tools for doing this are using retrospectives, improvement backlogs, use catalysts to encourage change, improvement community.

[Matija · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eclectic, very interestingly and humorously written and yet also broad and serious in its subject matter, guide to the author's model of management for agile software organizations. Unexpectedly, this book is also responsible for at least three (and probably more) new entries on my to-read list. I've enjoyed Mr. Appelo's references to biology and chaos theory a lot as he employs them masterfully to illustrate ideas about managing teams, and hits dry humour cracked me up at least once every three pages - no hyperbole! Deeply insightful and thoroughly enjoyable!

[Lauretta Gomez Llanos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best Agile book I have ever read, it took me more than a year to finish, I will update my favorite parts : ) after reading about management 3.0 everything changes.

[Mila Ley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Это книга в тройке лидеров сильнейших книг по менеджменту, которые читала. Автор не просто пропустил через себя тонну проф информации, но сравнив соединил, приправив своим колоссальным опытом. Очень интересно и не заурядно, так что всем желающим глоток вдохновения и интересных мыслей об управлении, от души рекомендую!

[Ariel Zgórski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book with many references to actual studies. The book is nicely structured - You always get one part that is pure theory and one that is practical. What I lack is a bit of a closure or finishing word from the author. But the most important things is that after all those years it is still up-to-date and should be read by everyone who wants to be real Agile Leader.

[Lukasz Nalepa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yay, I've made it ! So... this sentece is suggesting a bit why I gave that book only three stars - this book is surprisingly hard to read. I have managed to finish it only after third approach, whereas previous attempts failed miserably.

Don't get me wrong:
- I (almost) fully agree with the conclusions,
- The book is funny enough sometimes,
- I knew more or less the content before reading the book (and I knew that I agree with it),
- I attended the the Management 3.0 training lead by Jurgen himself,
- I read a lot of his work on many blogs, and articles,
- I attended a few conferences where he mas a speaker, key-note speaker and I loved it,
and yet - reading it was not a pleasure for me. If I were to rate only the content, not the form (if one can event separate it in a book), I think I would opt for 5 stars. But I can't, especially since I know I'm not the only one who struggled (or still struggles) to finish this book.

After considering carefully what I think the problem with this book was, I came to a conclusion, that it might be unnecessarily overcomplicated and too theoritiesed for my taste. I get, that to introduce Complexity Theory and other concepts that follow it, one need to lay down some science. The proble is that either it was badly served or it was too much of it. I am an egineer myself and most of the nerdy/techie/science stuff were only little new to me, but still I had a feeling that many times simple things were overcomplicated in a form of huge mental anti-shortcuts. And that it wasn't bring any value.

As for the content - I mostly disagree with parts of the 15th chapter. In the assumption that being agile is to to do whatever needs to be done to survive - it even makes complete sense :) But my personal point of view is that sometimes it may be not worth to survive, and bag "genes" stay bad, no matter if they help you survive or not. Why continue with the shitty business with the fixed price/scope/budget contracts (cause the customers whant them), big upfront requirements (cause your customer just gave you 500 pages requirements to study), and frontend teams being formed on the other side of the country. I do belive that in such cases it might not be worth to continue and make yourself and employees miserable.

But hey, all that is is just my opinion :)

[Jaideep Khanduja · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget...

Book Review: Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo: An Excellent Approach

Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Jurgen Appelo is talks about the relationship between an organization and management and how the success of failure depends a lot on this relationship. As we go by the chapters, we learn to know that at times it is not any external factors that becomes a failure factor for Agile development but the management of the organization. Agile management demands a good amount of trustworthy direction and supervision that is missing in most of the cases.

Agile Master Jurgen Appelo tries to fill that gap by guiding in a simple doable manner in his book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) where a practical focus is presented to provide a direction in managing an Agile team to start with and leading to an Agile organization. Current day software development is not as simple as it used to be, it comprises of lot of complexities that need to be handled and management so as to reach out to a winning goal. The excellent book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Jurgen Appelo is excellent in many terms. It understands the maturity level today’s organizations have reached to and the level of intensity it requires in its growth. The prime concern for today’s organization is its people and relationships.

Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo is a marvelously written book to hep you in carving your path to make your wins the agile way.

[Andy Lowry · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the first proper management book I've read (at least to completion) it's difficult to compare this to other management books. However I still believe this is a fantastic book.

The first part of the book presents a general overview of Management, Agile Software Development and Complexity Theory. The second part alternates between theory and practise of Jurgen's model.

For me this is a very different view of management than I've previously been aware of, and having an interest in Complexity Theory I found it easy to understand the ideas.

Also this must be one of the most heavily researched book I've ever read. In some places it feels more like a Scientific Paper on the State of the Art of Management Theory. Just the number and diverse range of references is astonishing.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has any interest at all in the theory and practise of management and leadership.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I gave this book 5 stars, but it really wasn't easy to evaluate.

On one hand, Jurgen is a really sharp fellow & book is packed with a lot of interesting insights, ideas, concepts & references to another sources. The content really seems relevant & clearly applies to manager's role, especially in somehow "agile" environment.

On the other hand though, the form of this book feels very soft. I've made some bookmarks to catch the most important (IMHO) messages, but truth is that this books feels just too _fluent_ - maybe author failed to put some necessary emphasis on some core, leading thoughts that would shape the character of the book. Yes, there are "the views", but they seem too mild / volatile (that's just my impression).

That's why even if I liked the content, I agree with it & I think it's really quite well written, this book didn't really "strike" me with its message. Anyway, maybe I just had a bad day (well, few days actually).

[Bjoern Rochel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The practical parts are superb. I especially like the chapters about team empowerment, about developing competence and Appelos definition of competency (skill + discipline).

I can say from first hand experience that a lot of this seems to go into the right direction, since the team I've worked in for the majority of this year successfully tried out some of the (for us Germans) crazier ideas (like the value exercise, sharing personality profiles and running experiments with the team setup). For these parts alone I will surely go back to this book from time to time.

The theoretical chapters though have been a bit of a letdown for me. Sometimes I just noticed my mind wandering off to more interesting topics. As much as I like the idea of a good theoretical backing, a little bit condensed version of the theoretical chapters would do the book a favour.

Overall something like a 3.75 from me.

[Eugene Tararaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a good book. Author shares his thoughts on management from the complexity theory point of view. His take on management covers many important topics such as people, constraints, change management, etc.
It's an interesting read and it delivers a good deal of useful insights. However, my problem with his approach is that there is relatively small amount of practical actionable advice. This is also aligned with one of the core ideas of the book, that every environment is different, and context is the king, so there is no a universally good advice.
Definitely not for fresh managers looking for grounded advice and information.

[Rafael Ghossi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ler esse livro foi (e continuará sendo) uma jornada. Além da abordagem mais científica (que eu amo), todo fim de capítulo tem algumas "call to action" pra aplicar o conhecimento explicado no seu dia a dia de trabalho. Isso fez com que eu demorasse de próposito para ir absorvendo o conteúdo aos poucos (e antes de terminar, já voltei em alguns capítulos pra reler por estar passando por exatamente aquele problema no trabalho). É um dos livros que vou manter como referência por um bom tempo.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Management is changing.
Things are not as simple as we thought, and their behavior not as predictable.

This book is a good first step to introduce complexity theories in the body of knowledge of management. Specially in management of software organisations.

[Pavleras · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of the most important books about this topic. From my point of view, it is a required novel for anybody who wants to improve management skills.
It is a funny book but few chapters are very difficult.

[Donatomm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike the usual business books, this one is so inspiring and solidly based on literature, scientific research and lesson learned that make it an absolute must read for everyone who deals with an organization - any of them

[Piet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most agile methodologies, including the widespread Scrum framework, more or less dispense of the manager. Does this mean that Management is no longer needed?

The answer is that managers still play an important role, and Jurgen Appelo's book “Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders” explains why.

Introducing agile methodologies such as Scrum will significantly change the way management works. The traditional command and control structure will be supplanted by a coaching / leadership approach where motivating and enabling teams will be crucial skills.

In his book, Jurgen Appelo shows the six views on organization the new management has to address in order to become successful:

Focusing on the people, Appelo starts with how management needs to Energize People and Empower Teams. The new management needs to actively Align Constraints and Grow Structure. To really become successful, an organization needs to Develop Competence. And since striving forward means to never be content, the book concludes with solid advice on how to Improve Everything.

Each view is introduced in two chapters, the first providing the theoretical background and the second the practical application and advice.

Appelo uses many anecdotes and examples of his own professional life, making the topic tangible and good to read. His witty style made me laugh many times. But despite the light tone, the book still provokes deep thinking about the way you want to lead your agile or scrum teams, and hands you valuable instruments to tackle this difficult Task.

View the book on:
Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/1fahvth
Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/1MAvmnj
Amazon.de: http://amzn.to/1L7APRZ

[Jeremy Huiskamp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other reviewers on GoodReads have complained that this book doesn't add anything that can't already be found in existing literature on agile management. For me, not having read that existing literature yet, this was really a strength of the book. I found the overview of the landscape and the very comprehensive bibliography to be very helpful.

I found the book to be very well written. It had a very well defined structure, iterating over 6 points by alternating between chapters on theory and practice, and the chapter summaries and constant framing made it relatively easy to keep track of the context. The writing flowed well, and enjoyed his quirky sense of humour, though I would quite understand if it annoyed other readers.

I found the chapters on practice a bit odd. The chapters on theory mostly dealt with complexity theory, where the main thesis is that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, and then the practice chapters came along and mentioned very specific solutions which I could easily imagine backfiring in various contexts. I guess he wasn't insisting that you try those specific solutions, but was merely making concrete examples to make the theory more relatable, but personally I found the theory fascinating enough.

One small, specific complaint about the footnotes with web links: they use his own url shortener, which he claimed in the intro was so that he could update the links to keep them correct longer than the originals would have lasted. 8 years later, he's not maintaining the shortener anymore, which is sad because it's quite a simple thing to do and he still seems to have control of the domain. Meanwhile, most of the original links would probably still be valid.

[Katlu · Rating 2 out of 5]

The presentation of theories from different sciences and their connection to working with software teams is a really inspiring approach. However the book presents (10 years after release) not a lot of new ideas (do not try to simplify before you understand complexity, systems depend on their context, change is not linear). Indeed the style of „agile“management presented is often rather old-fashioned with an acquired layer of dust (e. g. one on ones with your employees as a necessary nuisance, coaching employees is mainly about competence, a team‘s purpose should be formulated by the manager).

The first chapters seem a lot more thought through than the latter ones, which are often a bit sloppy in their argumentation. The „witty“ style with boys jokes and constant allusions to the writer‘s quirks (programming naked with the trunks over his head) with time become a bit annoying when you want to read a management book.

All in all, it might have had its merits 10 years ago. The theory and practice of Agile leadership has fortunately since then progressed beyond version 3.0 in many ways.

[Ryan Kapsar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was pretty interesting overall. This book tries to compile a collection of management best practices across the Software Engineering community. In this book, Appelo includes ideas from Complexity Science, Biology, Agile, Lean, Six Sigma (though minimally), General Business, Organizational Psychology, and his own management experiences.

This is filtered through the six views of management 3.0: Energize People, Empower Teams, Align Constraints, Develop Competence, Grow Structure, and Improve Everything. All these are vital, because whatever environment we're working in, will change. The business context, the competitive landscape, or the team itself.

I really enjoyed this read and I've applied some of the organization components already. I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to continue develop their Agile skills, but also how to be a manager in an Agile context.

[Mingmei Tsui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alright, so I just finished "Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders" and it's quite a read! Appelo has some fresh ideas on leadership and agile development that'll make you rethink your management style. The book's full of practical advice and tools you can actually use in your daily work. It's well-written and the visuals help a lot in understanding the concepts. But it's not all smooth sailing. Sometimes, it feels like it's trying to cover too much ground and ends up a bit scattered. Also, if you're not into Agile, some of the content might not hit home. And be ready for a heavy dose of theory along with the practical stuff. But if you're ready to shake up your management game, it's totally worth a read.

[Venkatesh Upadrista · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have met Jurgen in one of the conference and after understanding his knowledge in Agile, I started to review his book. In my past several years of teaching experience on topics of Distributed Agile, i came across experts who spoke about leadership in agile projects but i would have to admit that Jurgen has come across quite different in his articulation on how an agile leader should be developed. In his book, Jurgen has given a very realistic approach on how to develop leaders and nurture them which can show increasingly better results over the period of time.
I would highly recommend this book to any agile enthusiastic.