Recommended Reading for Agile Coaches

Coaching

  • The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever – Michael Bungay Stanier
  • Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great – Esther Derby | Diana Larsen
  • Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life – Henry Kimsey-House | Karen Kimsey-House | Phillip Sandahl | Laura Whitworth
  • The Trusted Advisor – David H. Maister | Charles H. Green | Robert M. Galford
  • Agile Coach to Chief Agility Officer: Placing the Agile Coach on the Leadership Team – Steve Peacocke
  • I’m Sorry I Broke Your Company: When Management Consultants Are the Problem, Not the Solution – Karen Phelan
  • Enterprise Agile Coaching: Sustaining Organizational Change Through Invitational Agile Coaching – Cherie Silas | Michael de la Maza | Alex Dudinov
  • Becoming Agile: in an imperfect world – Greg Smith | Ahmed Sidky
  • The Agile Thinker: Better Ways of Living, Working, and Making Sense of Life’s Chaos – Jack Walser

Culture

  • Tribal Unity: Getting from TEAMS to TRIBES by Creating a One Team Culture – Em Campbell-Pretty
  • The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups – Daniel Coyle
  • The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation – Henri Lipmanowicz | Keith McCandless
  • The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem – Chris McGoff
  • Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company – Kevin Oakes
  • A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future – Daniel H. Pink
  • Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Daniel H. Pink
  • Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love – Richard Sheridan

Fable

  • The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement – Eliyahu M. Goldratt
  • The Present: The Gift that Makes You Happy and Successful at Work and in Life – Spencer Johnson, M.D.
  • Who Moved My Cheese: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life – Spencer Johnson, M.D.
  • The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win – Gene Kim | Kevin Behr | George Spafford
  • The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data – Gene Kim
  • The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team – Patrick Lencioni
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable – Patrick Lencioni

Frameworks

FLOW

  • Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business – David J. Anderson
  • Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework – Mik Kersten
  • The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development – Donald G. Reinertsen
  • The Book of TameFlow: Theory of Constraints Applied to Knowledge-Work Management – Steve Tendon

Scrum

  • Agile Software Development with Scrum – Ken Schwaber | Mike Beedle
  • The Enterprise and Scrum – Ken Schwaber
  • Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams – Alan Shalloway | James R. Trott
  • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time – Jeff Sutherland | J.J. Sutherland

XP

  • Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change – Kent Beck
  • Planning Extreme Programming – Kent Beck | Martin Fowler
  • Extreme Programming Explored – William C. Wake
  • Testing Extreme Programming – Lisa Crispin | Tip House
  • Extreme Programming Applied: Playing to Win – Ken Auer | Roy Miller
  • Extreme Programming in Practice – James Newkirk | Robert C. Martin
  • Questioning Extreme Programming – Pete McBreen

Scaling

  • Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises – Dean Leffingwell

Leadership

  • Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box – The Arbinger Institute
  • The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict – The Arbinger Institute
  • The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves – The Arbinger Institute
  • Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change – Bill Joiner | Stephen Josephs
  • The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business – Patrick Lencioni
  • Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization – Dave Logan | John King | Halee Fischer-Wright
  • The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential – John C. Maxwell
  • Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t – Simon Sinek
  • Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone and Take Action – Simon Sinek

Organization

  • Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations – Nicole Forsgren, PhD | Jez Humble | Gene Kim
  • Lean Enterprise: How High-Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale – Jez Humble | Joanne Molesky | Barry O’Reilly
  • Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness – Frederic Laloux
  • The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries
  • The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization – Peter Senge
  • Remote Team Interactions Workbook: Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working – Matthew Skelton | Manuel Pais
  • Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow – Matthew Skelton | Manuel Pais

Practice

  • Test Driven Development: By Example – Kent Beck
  • The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process – Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute
  • Software by Numbers: Low-Risk, High Return Development – Mark Denne | Jane Cleland-Huang
  • Working Effectively with Legacy Code – Michael C. Feathers
  • User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product – Jeff Patton | Peter Economy
  • Sooner, Safer, Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility – Jonathan Smart
  • Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction – Daniel S. Vacanti
  • Pair Programming Illuminated – Laurie Williams | Robert Kessler

Teaching

  • Training from the Back of the Room: 65 Ways to Step Aside and Let Them Learn – Haron L. Bowman
  • The Ten-Minute Trainer: 150 Ways to Teach it Quick & Make it Stick – Sharon L. Bowman
  • Using Brain Science To Make Training Stick: Six Learning Principles That Trump Traditional Teaching – Sharon L. Bowman
  • Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences – Nancy Duarte
  • Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision – Thom Hartmann

Author: Michael Marchi

Michael Marchi CSM, CSPO, CSP-SM, CSP-PO, RSASP, AHF Management Consultant / Agile Coach & Trainer @ 42 North Unlimited (https://42north.llc) Co-Founder and Board Member @ APLN Chicago (https://aplnchicago.org) Co-Host [here's this agile thing] podcast (https://htat.show)