How To Do Agile
"How do we get started with Agile?"
"Do you have any good books or articles on Agile?"
"How do we do Agile?"
Here are the recommendations I make, and the approach I've used at multiple companies and with dozens of teams, to instill an Agile culture and establish the day-to-day processes for using Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Lean.
- Read the Four Agile Values: https://agilemanifesto.org
- Watch the Agile Product Ownership Video (15 minutes)
- Read the Scrum Guide (13 pages): https://scrumguides.org/index.html
- Read the 12 Agile Principles: https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- Identify Roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Scrum Team)
- Identify Work (Backlog and Sprint 0)
- Set Schedules (two week Sprints, 15 minute Daily Standup)
- Coach... Coach... Coach...
Book Recommendations
Agile is not a process. Agile is not a fad. Agile is not merely a set of rules. Rather, Agile is a set of rights, expectations, and disciplines of the kind that form the basis of an ethical profession. -Robert C. Martin, Clean Agile: Back to Basics.
- Software in 30 Days: How Agile Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, and Leave Competitors in the Dust
- Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (first edition recommended, find a used copy)
- Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
- Clean Coders: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
- Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
- Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases though Build, Test, and Deployment
Other Articles and References
- Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day
- Spotify's Engineering Culture is based on Agile values and principles customized for their purposes. The Spotify process introduces new concepts and terms and makes a good example for how Agile based processes can be adjusted to meet specfic objectives.