Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver

by Johanna Rothman

You think agile techniques might be for you, but your projects and organization are unique. An “out-of-the-box” agile approach won’t work. Instead, unite agile and lean principles for your project. See how to design a custom approach, reap the benefits of collaboration, and deliver value. For project managers who want to use agile techniques, managers who want to start, and technical leaders who want to know more and succeed, this book is your first step toward agile project success

Genres: Nonfiction, Management

225 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2017

About the author

People know me as the “Pragmatic Manager.” I offer frank, practical advice for your challenging product development problems.

I help leaders and teams see their current reality. Because one size never fits all, we explore options for what and how to change. The results? Leaders and teams learn to collaborate and focus on outcomes that matter.

My clients and readers appreciate both my trademark practicality and humor. I've written 21 books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of blog posts. See all my writing and monthly newsletters at www.jrothman.com and www.createadaptablelife.com.

I write in all genres except for horror because I need my sleep, and horror gives me nightmares. My short fiction has appeared in Pulphouse Magazine, Fiction River, and Heart’s Kiss in addition to several other anthologies.

Reviews

[Emre Sevinç · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a technical point of view, Agile project management, and particular methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban are neither new, nor very complex. In fact, one can say fundamental definitions, rules, metrics, and workflows could be easily summarized in a few pages. In other words, no rocket science.

So, why bother with a book that's more than 250 pages? As with all things related to organizing humans, and setting up communication structures, persuading people to move to a different methodology, listening to an expert that has multi-decade experience helps. It especially helps when it is always possible to encounter traps and pitfalls, and when you need to to deal with ambiguity, as well as certainty arising from different aspects of work cultures in different companies.

Is this book perfect? No, not at all. If you want read a more concrete and focused case study Lean from the Trenches might be your cup of tea. Or if you want to go into the details of User Stories, then User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development might serve you better for that particular topic. Nevertheless, I still find Rothman's book valuable for its broad coverage, as well as its explanations on how simple concepts such as "velocity", "burn down charts", "delivering business value", "definition of done" can be misinterpreted and abused.

The chapter on applying an agile approach to workgroups, who are not teams, and who are not software-focused is also valuable, because it shows how the general principles can be applied to cases where it's not about a single team working on a single software product / project.

I also liked her explanations about various aspects of estimation: not everything she says will be easy / compatible with your environment or way of working, but those explanations will give you a good basis for thinking about, and later, managing your estimates.

Finally, as a minor criticism I have to add I wish the publisher / editor took more care to print graphs and charts in full color, instead of grayscale! Pragmatic Bookshelf should take such aspects of book quality more seriously.

[Olivier Grange-Labat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this book, as much as I enjoyed other Johanna Rothman’s books and deeply respect her work (“Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management” influenced me years ago as a younger manager).

Several parts felt really long and I had to struggle not to stop reading at all.

Overall, I have no idea who is this book for: beginners will lack practical advices (eg on facilitating essential meetings such as retrospectives), and intermediate/advanced readers won’t learn much.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing practical, pragmatic guidance on how you approach agile ways of working. Still as relevant as ever, I recommend Johanna's books to everyone.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a current look on agile software developments and explains how new ideas like mob programming and #NoEstimates fit into the big picture. It covers all the usual topics and offers some unique perspectives: How do you combine people with different expectations? What can you do to create an environment of safety and how does this influence project management? Those important and most overlooked aspects should have gotten more space. Even so, this book offers enough unique content to be of value for people who use agile methods for a longer time.