What do you think?
Rate this book
Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change
Thriving in today's marketplace frequently depends on making a transformation to become more agile. Those successful in the transition enjoy faster delivery speed and ROI, higher satisfaction, continuous improvement, and additional benefits. Based on actual events, Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change provides a revealing behind-the-scenes account of a successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company.
Scott M. Graffius' first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, provides readers with practical information they can use to get benefits from the most popular agile framework, Scrum. It presents top practices from successful implementations based on Scott's hands-on experience and 116 diverse sources such as the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, MIT, the IEEE, Gartner, and the Software Engineering Institute. BookAuthority named Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions "One of the Best Scrum Books of All Time." The publication garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and his book have been featured in Yahoo Finance, Computer Weekly, the PM World Journal, Learning Solutions, Innovation Management, and additional media publications.
In Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, Scott shares a behind-the-scenes account of a successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company. The story is based on actual events and it's told from Scott's perspective as an agile coach. The transformation dramatically improved the way the organization works and delivers business value. New capabilities and practices enabled the enterprise to adapt to its changing environment, move faster, and drive innovation, which made it more competitive and prosperous.
Scott M. Graffius' first book, Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions, provides readers with practical information they can use to get benefits from the most popular agile framework, Scrum. It presents top practices from successful implementations based on Scott's hands-on experience and 116 diverse sources such as the Scrum Alliance, the Project Management Institute, MIT, the IEEE, Gartner, and the Software Engineering Institute. BookAuthority named Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions "One of the Best Scrum Books of All Time." The publication garnered 17 first place awards from national and international competitions. Scott and his book have been featured in Yahoo Finance, Computer Weekly, the PM World Journal, Learning Solutions, Innovation Management, and additional media publications.
In Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change, Scott shares a behind-the-scenes account of a successful agile implementation at a global entertainment company. The story is based on actual events and it's told from Scott's perspective as an agile coach. The transformation dramatically improved the way the organization works and delivers business value. New capabilities and practices enabled the enterprise to adapt to its changing environment, move faster, and drive innovation, which made it more competitive and prosperous.
68 pages, Paperback
Published June 6, 2019
8 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 22, 2019
I just finished this. I read 1-2 books on agile a month and Agile Transformation is one of the best ones I've read in years. It tells a story from start to finish about a real scrum implementation. I found it practical and insightful. I gave me lots of ideas about working with different people/groups (stakeholders/sponsors, scrum master, product owner, development team) more effectively to better achieve agility and deliver business value. I understand and agree with the author when he wrote towards the end (I don't think this is a spolier) "By adopting an agile mindset and providing improved engagement, collaboration, transparency, and adaptability via Scrum's values, roles, events, and artifacts, the results were excellent.” The only negative: The title and description says it's a brief story so I did not expect a thick book but I wish it was longer. I can't recommend this enough!
May 23, 2019
Found this after reading Sutherland’s latest book. In this Agile Transformation book, l like the information and the author’s perspective and tone. If it was longer, I’d give it 5/5.
July 9, 2020
NOTE: I received this book for free from the author in exchange for writing an impartial review.
I have now read two books by Scott Graffius: Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation. In my review for his first book, I felt something was missing. After having read Agile Transformation, I believe I know what that something was: this book. I feel that both Agile Scrum and Agile Transformation would work well together as one book. Let me explain.
In Agile Scrum, Graffius takes you through the process of how to get started using the Agile process while in Agile Transformation, he uses his own experience to tell a story of how it's used. I feel that this book provides the context that I thought missing before. That said, I enjoyed his description of how he was called in to teach this company to truly use the Agile process after a previous vendor left them hanging. Seeing the entire process unfold made it seem real. My favorite chapter was the final chapter where he took each of the goals they had created earlier and showed how each goal had been achieved or exceeded.
I had two concerns, though. First, sometimes Graffius's writing was frustratingly vague. For example, in Part Five, he writes that "In a session facilitated by the Scrum Master, the Product Owner presented the user stories to the Development Team, and participants provided story points (using physical cards for the exercise) for estimates of complexity of each item. Later, the team tried t-shirt sizing—S, M, L, and XL designations—for estimates of complexity, but they decided to return to story points." He then moves on. I would have been interested in seeing what obstacles the team encountered that caused them to change course.
Second, sometimes he would describe the tools that the customer used, but never show them. I think that a simple mock-up with fake data would have made these more real.
Overall, I enjoyed Graffius's second book and I feel that both books can definitely be useful. I feel that if he can fill in some of these gaps, then his future books will be even better.
Graffius, Scott M.. Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change . Kindle Edition.
I have now read two books by Scott Graffius: Agile Scrum: Your Quick Start Guide with Step-by-Step Instructions and Agile Transformation. In my review for his first book, I felt something was missing. After having read Agile Transformation, I believe I know what that something was: this book. I feel that both Agile Scrum and Agile Transformation would work well together as one book. Let me explain.
In Agile Scrum, Graffius takes you through the process of how to get started using the Agile process while in Agile Transformation, he uses his own experience to tell a story of how it's used. I feel that this book provides the context that I thought missing before. That said, I enjoyed his description of how he was called in to teach this company to truly use the Agile process after a previous vendor left them hanging. Seeing the entire process unfold made it seem real. My favorite chapter was the final chapter where he took each of the goals they had created earlier and showed how each goal had been achieved or exceeded.
I had two concerns, though. First, sometimes Graffius's writing was frustratingly vague. For example, in Part Five, he writes that "In a session facilitated by the Scrum Master, the Product Owner presented the user stories to the Development Team, and participants provided story points (using physical cards for the exercise) for estimates of complexity of each item. Later, the team tried t-shirt sizing—S, M, L, and XL designations—for estimates of complexity, but they decided to return to story points." He then moves on. I would have been interested in seeing what obstacles the team encountered that caused them to change course.
Second, sometimes he would describe the tools that the customer used, but never show them. I think that a simple mock-up with fake data would have made these more real.
Overall, I enjoyed Graffius's second book and I feel that both books can definitely be useful. I feel that if he can fill in some of these gaps, then his future books will be even better.
Graffius, Scott M.. Agile Transformation: A Brief Story of How an Entertainment Company Developed New Capabilities and Unlocked Business Agility to Thrive in an Era of Rapid Change . Kindle Edition.
May 21, 2021
A pretty basic "book" - more of a diary of a team coach who went an implemented scrum in a team. Transformation is a 100x more complex thingy...the author should have just called it "agile adoption" or even more accurately "scrum adoption inside one team". Perhaps good for those who have zero idea of what is scrum way of doing things, which is a dwindling minority, I must add!
July 28, 2019
This is a short book but it delivers a ton of useful content. The thing I like most is the full journey described by Scott and exactly what was done along the way to result in a successful agile implementation and transformation. Good information to reference and apply.
June 18, 2019
Quick read with lots of good tips. Mandatory reading for agile implementations.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews