Before I go into my list of suggestions, I want to take a moment and briefly touch on one of the things I am most passionate about in terms of Agile.

Agile is a set of values and principles that were written by a group of software developers back in 2001. It is not a framework. It is not a process. There are frameworks and processes that people who are interested in increasing business agility can use but following any one particular “path” is not being Agile. It is doing Agile.

If you ever hear that you have to…well, I was going to create a list of things of things here, but basically if anyone tells you that you “have” to do something in order to “be” Agile that is a big red flag and you should be wary. Always go back to the manifesto. It is short and sweet and should be posted up somewhere you can reference it often. This is a great little PDF that I use. While I am talking about the manifesto, there is a version that was created specifically around Marketing teams. You can find it here. There is also something out there called Modern Agile that is a more streamlined and focused version of the original manifesto. What you will find across the board, though, is that all these various documents focus on values and principles. Not “doing stand ups.”

With all that out of the way, here are some things you can do to learn a little more about the “other stuff.”

Agile Values

• The Age of Agile by Stephen Denning is currently at the top of my recommendation list. It is all about the pursuit of true agility, and hardly mentions any sort of frameworks or specific methodologies at all. In fact, Denning points out that most companies that are well known as being Agile companies made up their own processes and got copied. While I am talking about Denning, the article he wrote for Forbes about “fake” Agile is well worth the read as well. The book is a little slow to start but it gets better as you read.
• Turn the Ship Around and Leadership is Language by David Marquet. I first saw Marquet speak at the Global Scrum Gathering back in 2016, where he gave a presentation based on his first book. Again, nothing in these books specifically about any sort of framework but a whole lot about what real business agility should look like.
• Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal. This is one of the first books I was exposed to once I jumped into the overall Agile community, and it is a remarkably interesting and informative read.

Scrum

• Read the Scrum guide. No, seriously. It is free and should take you ten or fifteen minutes at most. This is the most important thing you can do in terms of learning Scrum, and anything else you consume that is related to Scrum should be compared back to the guide and scrutinized accordingly. There is a whole bunch of “stuff” out there that people think is part of Scrum that is not (user stories, for example, are not mentioned in the Scrum guide. Nor is sizing or the Fibonacci sequence).
• If you are a visual person, this is a great video I use when introducing teams to Scrum and unless you are filling the role of Scrum Master or Product Owner it is really all you need to know to be part of a Scrum team. Keep in mind what I said in the bullet point above, though. There are things in this video that are not part of Scrum and not “required” practices.
• Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time is a book by one of the co-creators of Scrum and a remarkably interesting study into the framework. Sutherland gets a lot of criticism over his ego in this book, and he does very much put forward that Scrum can be applied anywhere, and you are dumb if you do not use it. I think it can be used much more broadly than people think, but I am not entirely convinced it is a solution for every problem. The book has many interesting case studies with teams using Scrum outside of software development, though, and it also talks about ways to “sell” the framework from the perspective of ROI.
• Essential Scrum is a book by Kenneth S. Rubin that we read as an organization early on in our transformation and has a lot of good “deep” value for those who want to learn more beyond the basics that are presented in the Scrum guide. I must repeat the same caveat that I did earlier, though. This is not a bible. This is not the Scrum guide. There are processes and tools listed in this book that are not “required” parts of Scrum that subsequently can, and should, be tossed out if they are not working for a team or organization. I harp on this point because one of my constant frustrations over the years as an Agile coach is running up against individuals who insist that certain practices must be followed that are 100% not part of the Scrum guide (I also happen to believe that any team that has been using Scrum, and doing it well, will eventually evolve to a point when certain practices found in the Scrum guide are no longer necessary either. Bottom line is that if you are following the same practices that worked two years ago and literally nothing has changed I question whether or not you are actually learning or trying to get better at what you do).

Kanban

• This book by David J. Anderson is dry as hell and boring but It is pretty much “the” book about Kanban. I really cannot say much more about it. It is included here because it is a good source, but you will never hear me say I enjoyed reading it.
• A book I did enjoy, however, that really talks about some of the reasons why flow is important, is The Phoenix Project. This book is basically a modern version of The Goal, which was a fable about flow and the theory of constraints in the manufacturing world. The Phoenix Project translates those lessons over to the DevOps world. For a book about management principles it is not only very educational, but an entertaining read as well.

Agile at Scale

So this is kind of touchy subject, because if you think people try to put constraints around Agility on teams, wait until you run across an organization that has had success and now they want it to spread across the enterprise. This is where things tend to get very “command and control” and quick. If you were to ask me where an organization should start, I would suggest Scrum@Scale. Like Scrum, the Scrum@Scale guide is simple, short, and free. You can read it quickly and if you are familiar with Scrum the concepts are not radically different from what you already know. Another major player in the field is SAFe. I loathe SAFe. Just looking at the SAFe diagram gives me a headache. There are some good things buried in the overly complicated mess that is the framework, though, and if you are talking about scaled agile you should at least be familiar with it.

I mean look at this hot mess. Seriously.

Certifications

Certifications seem to be a necessary evil if you are looking for a job in the Agile world, but there are a whole bunch of people out there who hold certifications that are no more Agile than the ninety year old tortoise that I wished lived in my back yard. If you are looking to be as economical as possible the certifications offered through Scrum.org can be taken without having to attend an expensive class and are generally acceptable for most jobs descriptions. If you want to take a class to prepare for any of their certifications, AgileThought has some great folks on their staff. I have not taken any of their official classes, but I am confident enough in the team there to assume they would be great. The other big name in the certification world is the Scrum Alliance, but all of their certifications require expensive classroom work unless you are working with an organization that has a Certified Team Coach on staff. If you decide to go that route, I am a huge fan of the team over at Braintrust. All but one of my certification classes were taught by the team there, and I have learned a lot from (and enjoyed) every one of them.

One quick tip about certifications and classes – Most of these classes have rarely, if ever, been offered virtually prior to this year. There has always been a belief that, as stated in the manifesto, the most value for classes like this came from face-to-face interaction. Many of these companies have had to pivot quickly to try and keep their training income flowing. I mention this primarily because I feel like it is a great time to negotiate training costs. Now do not get me wrong, I suggested the companies above because I think they are solid folks and I want to see them get paid, but certifications are not cheap. I think this is a great time for them to fill some seats for folks who might have smaller budgets or be paying for classes on their own, so ask for it. The worst they can say is no, right?

Networking

Florida has a huge and highly active Agile community, and there are so many free events happening every month that those of us involved in putting them on must coordinate to make sure we are not stepping on each other. Join the Tampa Bay Agile Meetup Group and start attending some of the local meetups. Obviously right now they are all virtual, but we have more events happening now than we were when we were face-to-face. It has been a little quiet lately, but there is also a great Florida Agile community accessible through Slack. Twitter and LinkedIn are also great places to learn more about Agile, but as I write that I realize I have no easy way to share the folks I get value out of in either place. I suppose it is time for me to create some lists.

Other Resources

• Coaching Agile Journeys is a Florida based community of Agile practitioners who put on several virtual events a month, mostly during daytime hours.
• AgileThought has been hosting weekly free virtual events. You can keep an eye out for upcoming ones on their event page.
• Their events are listed though the Tampa Bay Agile meetup group, but I want to specifically point out the Tampa Bay Women in Agile group. This is the local chapter of a worldwide organization that is part of the Agile Alliance, and I am a huge supporter of their cause.

In Conclusion

The more I look at this document, the more I want to add to it. Which is, at its core, directly counter to trying to deliver the Most Viable Product to my customers. Ultimately, I hope you find at least one thing in here that you can walk away with that helps you move further along your Agile journey. I am currently working on becoming an IC Agile Coaching Expert, so if you found value here and would be interested in some one-on-one professional coaching so I can practice on people who I do not work with let me know.

I would like to thank Kari Goetz and Michelle Peatee for being the inspirations behind this post. They both reached out to me at the same time, so I initially started putting it together for them. What you just read is the finished product.