Great for those who are doing Agile at work.
580170
I bought this book to participate in a book reading group.  The meetings were held as a Google Hangout.  Unfortunately, due to other obligations, I was not able to participate in all of the group meetings, and it took a while to get through the book.  However, it was a worthwhile exercise.
1586410
Love Mr. Apello's book. Pragmatic and practical advises and tools that can aid any Agile professional.
I highly recommended.
141333
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) adds yet another agile `flavor' to the many currently floating out there.  What differentiates DAD from the other Agile flavors is that it incorporates many of the best practices of the non-Agile methodologies in order to achieve what the authors refer to as `Agility@scale'.  Too often, agile practices can involve starting from scratch and working in a vacuum.  This will work well for small, self-organizing teams working on isolated software development.  For the rest of us working in Enterprise I.T., working on small, isolated teams is simply not an option.  The integration points too many, the effort too large, infrastructure too intensive or costly and the co-ordination costs are high.
This is where DAD steps in.  The authors ambitiously strive to seek a balance between the best of the Agile and Non-Agile project management body of knowledge.  Their emphasis is on delivering solutions, not just software.  Also, the authors also note the wisdom of leveraging existing infrastructure and enterprise solutions without building from scratch.  This is still an Agile approach but one focused more on realities of the medium to large I.T. implementations rather than the small ones.  Whereas most Agile approaches strive to keep teams as small as possible, this approach attempts to scale them up for larger projects by creating (potentially) multiple small teams but by putting in place a minimalist project management co-ordination necessary to keep those teams working for the same goals.  The authors leverage Lean practices, Extreme Programming (XP), Open Unified Process (OpenUp), Scrum, Agile Modeling and Agile Data approaches, as well as a number of other sources, to scale up the successes that Agile approaches have had on smaller implementations.

All in all, this is a very good book on a very much needed topic.  With all the acronyms and frequent project manager-speak, it can be a little rough of a read.  This is a good choice for a Project Manager or Team Lead who is struggling to fit their enterprise effort into the small teams recommended by most Agile methods.
3782900
As a UX Designer working in a company transitioning from Waterfall to Agile, I found this book to be extremely helpful in informing our team's process. One of the most important concepts to our process is the Design Studio. Historically, our company has operated in silos. The Design Studio concept has helped bridge those individual understandings and provide a structure to creative meetings. As a result, the entire team is engaged, and digital products meet customer needs.

I recommend this book for anyone in a more traditional company who knows there is a better way, but needs a little structure to inform their process.
1047792
It is just a heads up. However this book does a good job explaining the scrum. Reading it was an agile way of learning for an agile methodology.
1374956
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/a-must-listen-audio-book-on-agileprojectmanagement/

A Must Listen Audio Book On #agileprojectmanagement

If you have an expertise in Agile Project Management, then probably you need to put your hands on some advanced book as this is meant for the rookies, starters and beginners in Agile Project Management. As the name Agile Project Management QuickStart Guide: A Simplified Beginners Guide to Agile Project Management suggests, it is meant to guide beginners in a very simplified manner telling you all about how to manage your projects in Agile way. I prefer audio books these days so as to keep listening to them when being on the move/driving or sitting in a lounge waiting for some business meet to happen. The book is written by ClydeBank Business and narrated by Dave Barron. Narration, voice, and interpretations are quite impressive and easy to understand. Duration of the book is almost 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Just keep one thing in mind while listening to this audio book. Go back and listen again if you skipped few lines or paragraphs or a chapter rather than continuing listening. It is always good to keep previous lesions intact in mind while moving further. Agile Project Management QuickStart Guide is written well with a focused approach to making one understand the different between traditional project methodologies like waterfall approach and the modern agile project management methodology. Agile project methodology always helps your project(s) to stay on track and achieve planned targets in terms of financials, timelines, and deliveries; without compromising quality. Noticeably, Agile project management or agile methodology permits you to entertain as many changes in the customer requirements as you wish as the crux of the game lies on iterations that are small but measurable. The customer is engaged throughout all iterations and after any iteration being signed off the next iterations requirements are re-evaluated with the customer before going for its development.

Before you adopt Agile Project Management, it is important to learn its basics that are well explained in this book so as to build a good foundation of your learning on the subject. Understanding the strategies and tools is an important factor before you jump into the real world of Agile Project Management. The book helps you understanding all this in a simplified manner with the help of some good case studies. As the book states, it is important for a project manager to be well organized, having a practical approach and, stay specific & crisp for managing a project in an agile way. The step by step building up approach taken in the book in a precise manner is good in understanding the subject while elevating the level of learning.

Before you finish this book you will be well aware of all the relevant terms and their significance in agile life. Few words like scrum, iterations or chunks, standing meeting, burn chart and so on, you will understand while listening to the various chapters of this book. Total 10 chapters are full of wisdom and a great learning. Chapter 1 starts with the basics of project management explaining what project management is and what its need is. Chapter 2 goes with the history of Agile Project Management. Chapter 3 brings the Agile Project Management on the table where your real journey of understanding the subject begins. And so it goes up to the chapter 10 telling about agile sub-industry that consists of agile professionals and their official activities. Definitely you require a different kind of discipline to imbibe in your teams to follow agile project management for which you need to have a thorough knowledge on the subject.
824131
This is as is says and is very well done. It is very consistent with Agile, providing minimal documentation.
1689522
This book explores many of the deeper organizational sediments involved in agile adoption, and provides an approach to agile adoption which seeks to address the wider organizational context in which it invariably takes place.

The book's clear and easy-to-follow approach helps the Agile practitioner bring together elements of agile project management, extreme programming, and organizational development thinking, into a holistic solution to agile adoption.

The book has an easy, casual prose style, and is full of useful diagrams and tables for easy reference.

The book points to new directions for Agile adoption, ones that become increasingly relevant as agile practice continues to move further and further into mainstream IT organizations.  Great book!
3355116
This book is an excellent resource for those brave individuals who realize that "the way we do things in Government" is just not going to cut it anymore.

The book provides a look into successful government projects that chose to use agile techniques. Some of them were last ditch efforts to save a repeating failure where hundreds of millions of dollars were spent with no derived benefit. That should make every tax payer angry!! But seeing how adopting new techniques can change the game gives you a view into what is possible.

If you're looking for easy answers to everything, you won't find it in this book or anywhere else for that matter. Taking on an agile transition in either the public or private sector takes bold leadership and a willingness to learn. That's what this book stresses. It provides a view into the challenges that government agencies in different countries faced as they did this.

I have been involved in a number of transitions in US Government agencies, none of them were easy. I would classify them as all out battles. People get very emotional because it rips at the very heart of the culture. The organizations that took on the fight did very well and added to the growing number of success stories. Many are still face-to-face with the enemy within, and their fate is yet to be determined. Perhaps this book will give them a bit of hope for the future.

We are in for a very long journey of change in government agencies as they begin to adopt these methods. They certainly highlight the huge amount of waste involved in the procurement, development, and deployment of IT systems using traditional methods. Consistent small steps forward are the best way to begin these transitions. Sometimes a pilot project or a project run "under the radar" is the best way for the learning to begin.

I highly recommend this book and am going to make this required reading for my clients in government organizations.

Bob Schatz
Agile Infusion LLC
1815074
A nice little introduction to agile. A recommended buy, particularly for those who are new to agile methodologies, and want to get a quick insight. It's as lightweight as agile processes are :)
887580
Great book. A hands-on approach to agile retrospectives. Useful to Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Team Members alike.
3098044
Wondering whether you're missing something by not formally applying agile methods, but not sure how much to invest in learning about them? Here's an "executive summary" book that's actually pretty easy to read. It covers a number of currently popular development methods, as well as giving history and evidence for how people got to these methods. All in an easy-to-ready format with useful "hypertext" references, in the margins, to other parts of the book. Read a chapter a week and it's like going to a good course. I read about half the book and now know I can come back for the rest if I have a specific question.
1510940
I am reviewing a copy of "The Together Leader" by Maia Heyck-Merlin that I received at no cost through the Amazon Vine program.

This was somewhat an odd pick for me because I'm not in a formal leadership role and I'm not at a not-for-profit, which is the primary audience of the book. But what spoke to me is that I struggle is in organizing multiple competing deadlines while keeping in-progress towards longer-term project goals, and this book seemed to be designed with that balance in mind.

I was not let down - in fact, I continue to delve into this masterful workbook and find new nuggets. Ms. Heyck-Merlin has created a very accessible resource that is immediately useful even as one reads through it. The chapters are short, to the point, and friendly in the sense that there are no strange keywords, deep theories about human nature, or woeful dependence upon expensive resources. She wrote this with the idea that it be useful, and it shines through from chapter 1 forward. The introduction to each concept is brief and there are multiple examples, mostly from school administrators or teachers, of to implement. The idea isn't to stick with one thing but rather to do whatever works.

It turns out that the focus on school administrators works quite well for my work, even though I work in I.T. Our Agile project management has a just-in-time focus which emphasizes breaking down longer-term goals into shorter-term results that can be targeted in a day's work or less. However, Agile is not meant to connect a functional team member with a year-long goal, or a goal that exists outside of the scope of the current project. So the concepts laid out in "The Together Leader" fill in that gap nicely. Indeed, for continual career development it is essential to look beyond the current project or even the next project and to see where you and your organization are going in the next six months to year.

I also have to call out the number of resources that Ms. Heyck-Merlin provides on her website. She is a true believer in her work, knows it does great things for those who use it, and wants to evangelize the tools that work.

Five stars for the first time management book I've gotten excited about in at least five years.
2754827
You can literally find the entirety of this information via google. This book is well made for keeping in your office for new hires who are not familiar with Agile at all in place of sending them to Wikipedia.
2879155
Whether you believe in The Scaled Agile framework or not, this book is superb. It provides factual and insightful information about the  "why" of Agile practices in an enterprise environment. There's a lot of strong information where traditional agile methodology falls short such as the role of the architect, the product manager, and addressing the complexities of multi-team projects that goes way beyond SOS. Interesting and educational too. Love it.
3462107
This book is great. There's plenty of books and videos out there on how to use Scrum, but hardly any go into _why_ you should use Scrum and why each step is necessary. This book isn't meant to teach you Scrum. Instead, it's meant to justify the art of Scrum itself, and convince you to use it. I've never implemented all of Scrum at my workplaces, but the parts we do incorporate have dramatically improved productivity.

Overall, even if you don't plan on using Scrum, I recommend reading this book. You'll take away some great ways to be more productive and enjoy some entertaining stories along the way.
2735090
Here is a synopsis of my review of Agile Product Management with Scrum. For a full detailed review listing both highlights of the book and areas of improvement please see my full blog post at decoding.software [link is provided in the comment to this review].

Roman Pichler's Agile Product Management with Scrum is an excellent resource for new Product Owners and newcomers to Scrum!
Allow me to start of bring telling you about some of the books strong points. Based on the research I have done it is widely believed that when this book was first published circa 2010 it was one of the only books of its kind providing some guidance and insight into primarily the product ownership role on an agile project and in particular utilizing the scrum framework. Given the time of its release and the content presented I think it does a good job at indoctrinating the newer members into the Product Owner's "club". I believe the author does a very good job in highlighting defining the role, how to play the role well, common mistakes and techniques and strategies for creating the necessary artifacts and participate in necessary ceremonies.