Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Head First Series

Head First Agile: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Agile Principles, Ideas, and Real-World Practices

Rate this book
Head First Agile is a complete guide to learning real-world agile ideas, practices, principles.

What will you learn from this book?

In Head First Agile, you'll learn all about the ideas behind agile and the straightforward practices that drive it. You'll take deep dives into Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban, the most common real-world agile approaches today. You'll learn how to use agile to help your teams plan better, work better together, write better code, and improve as a team--because agile not only leads to great results, but agile teams say they also have a much better time at work. Head First Agile will help you get agile into your brain... and onto your team!

Preparing for your PMI-ACP(R) certification?

This book also has everything you need to get certified, with 100% coverage of the PMI-ACP(R) exam. Luckily, the most effective way to prepare for the exam is to get agile into your brain--so instead of cramming, you're learning.

Why does this book look so different?

Based on the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory, Head First Agile uses a visually rich format to engage your mind, rather than a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep. Why waste your time struggling with new concepts? This multi-sensory learning experience is designed for the way your brain really works.

490 pages, ebook

Published September 18, 2017

108 people are currently reading
330 people want to read

About the author

Andrew Stellman

10 books16 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
52 (33%)
4 stars
61 (39%)
3 stars
36 (23%)
2 stars
4 (2%)
1 star
1 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Jeanne Boyarsky.
Author 28 books76 followers
May 13, 2018
Head First books are always fun. I had read O'Reilly's “Learning Agile” by the same authors and there is some overlap. The Head First book was really “too easy” for me, but I read it to be entertained. And also to have a common language with those just learning agile.

Early on, I had a moment of puzzlement – 30 days sprints in Scrum, really? Sixty pages later, they do say that 2 weeks is more common.

There are lots of interactive activities for reinforcement including crossword puzzles to review the terms. The madlibs style fill in the blanks is fun. As were the venn diagrams. I learned a couple new agile games like 1-2 words on how each team member is feeling.

As with many agile books, I was inspired to try new things with my team. Even reading ideas you have heard before helps see those.

The book ends with a full 128 questions PMP practice exam. I like how they kept all the PMP parts to two chapters at the back.

I give this book 8 out of 10 horseshoes.

---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.
Profile Image for Pekka Huhtala.
97 reviews5 followers
April 21, 2019
This is indeed a brain friendly book. Learn completely new or rehearse what you already know. Have it on your shelf. If you need to sell agile, here you have great arguments for that.
Profile Image for Prasanna Venkataraman.
65 reviews
April 10, 2018
Good read to know about the basics of Agile. I have been following this practices for sometime without knowing the name of it / thinking in detail about why that was there in the first place. This book answers that part. It explained about Agile, Scrum practices, XP, Kanban. I felt my interest faded away when I read the last part which is Kanban methodology, but apart from that others are a good read. Motivated me to read about Extreme Programming Explained.
Profile Image for Dragan Bogdan.
26 reviews4 followers
June 24, 2020
I wanted to learn SCRUM and started with this book beside the information which you can find it at scrum.org.
Its good, I liked it, also the questions are good to work your hand.
The books goes also in other topics like Agile, Lean ... etc but I have skimmed them as my focus currently was on SCRUM and for this the book did its job beautifully.
Profile Image for Timur Koshel.
12 reviews
December 5, 2018
Its a bit boring at the end and there is a lot of PMI-ACP certification advertisements. But its still worth reading.
6 reviews1 follower
August 5, 2019
Probably a good book for someone very new to agile software development. I didn't find it particularly inspiring. Call me a bore, but the never-ending humour gets a bit annoying at times :-/
Profile Image for Tobias Sell.
102 reviews
April 8, 2020
Schönes Arbeitsbuch zur Einführung in die Agilen Arbeitsmethoden. Eignet sich durch den Aufbau für ein Selbststudium, gerade für den Einstieg in Scrum und XP.
Profile Image for John Fletcher.
228 reviews5 followers
June 18, 2020
An excellent book to get used to agile concepts and study for the PMIACP
Profile Image for Rebecca.
47 reviews1 follower
August 1, 2021
A lot of typos and what seemed like basic, easily fixable mistakes. Very disappointed since their PMP prep book was so good. Overall helpful study material though.
Profile Image for D. Dorka.
594 reviews27 followers
September 5, 2022
A really good book about agile, with a lot of practical content. Convenient for a first-and-last book about the methods.
Profile Image for zoagli.
575 reviews4 followers
October 14, 2023
Very useful and engaging. Even as an agile expert, I made lots of new connections between the different practices and to their underlying values.

One quibble: The practice exam at the end is much harder than the rest of the book. I would have preferred to have tough questions also after each chapter to help me understand whether my knowledge was up to ACP level.
Profile Image for Edin Kapić.
Author 1 book7 followers
June 5, 2020
Excellent summary of Agile principles/practices. The only nuisance is that it also doubles as a preparation for PMI Agile Practitioner exam, and if you don't need it you have to skip the questions and it makes for a little bit jarring reading experience.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.