 I'm often asked during training sessions about follow on reading, or the source of certain ideas or concepts. So I've put together this list of useful books and references. I'm trying to keep this list concise and not exhaustive. I personally find I have a limited capacity for reading text books, so what I do read I want to be pertinent, concise and extremely relevant to my day to day work. A lot of these books are 'industry standard' and some of them define terms that are used every day in our workplaces.
Project Management / Agile
The Scrum guide
Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland
The definitive guide to Scrum: www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
Mike Cohn 2004
Everything you need to know about user stories and how they are used in product development. Very readable and practical.
Agile Project Management with Scrum
Ken Schwaber 2004
First book I ever read about Scrum. Its based on case studies and gets you thinking about your project experience and how it relates to Scrum. Short, concise, still the best introduction to Scrum around.
Agile Estimating and Planning
Mike Cohn 2005
Very accessible exploration of how estimation works in Agile. Helps answer the common question "when will it get done"! There some good practical detail about how to calculate business value and requirement desirability
Kanban
David J Anderson 2011
Great introduction to Kanban. Lots of applied case studies and reads very well.
The Software Manager's bridge to Agility
Michele Sliger & Stacia Broderick
Good overview of how Agile relates to more traditional project management approaches. Its aimed at helping transition Project Managers over to agile, but I found it helpful in understanding some aspects of traditional project management and how they are affected by Agile. My reason for reading this book was preparation for the PMI Agile certified Practitioner exam for which it is a core book.
Software Development
Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software
Erich Gamma et al 1994
The classic patterns book. Bit difficult to read, treat it like a catalogue. I keep coming back to mine over and over again.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Martin Fowler 1999
Great book on refactoring patterns. You’ll probably have been using these in your work but its good to have affirmation that they are industry standard practices.
UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modelling Language
Martin Fowler 2003
Everything you need to know about UML in 208 pages. Its a breeze compared to some theory books. Well written and practical. I use it every week. |