Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum

A Mike Cohn Signature Book

by Mike Cohn

Proven, 100% Practical Guidance for Making Scrum and Agile Work in Any Organization.

This is the definitive, realistic, actionable guide to starting fast with Scrum and agile–and then succeeding over the long haul. Leading agile consultant and practitioner Mike Cohn presents detailed recommendations, powerful tips, and real-world case studies drawn from his unparalleled experience helping hundreds of software organizations make Scrum and agile work.

"Succeeding with Agile" is for pragmatic software professionals who want real answers to the most difficult challenges they face in implementing Scrum. Cohn covers every facet of the transition: getting started, helping individuals transition to new roles, structuring teams, scaling up, working with a distributed team, and finally, implementing effective metrics and continuous improvement.

Throughout, Cohn presents “Things to Try Now” sections based on his most successful advice. Complementary “Objection” sections reproduce typical conversations with those resisting change and offer practical guidance for addressing their concerns. Coverage includes:
- Practical ways to get started immediately–and “get good” fast
- Overcoming individual resistance to the changes Scrum requires
- Staffing Scrum projects and building effective teams
- Establishing “improvement communities” of people who are passionate about driving change
- Choosing which agile technical practices to use or experiment with
- Leading self-organizing teams
- Making the most of Scrum sprints, planning, and quality techniques
- Scaling Scrum to distributed, multiteam projects
- Using Scrum on projects with complex sequential processes or challenging compliance and governance requirements
- Understanding Scrum’s impact on HR, facilities, and project management

Whether you've completed a few sprints or multiple agile projects and whatever your role–manager, developer, coach, ScrumMaster, product owner, analyst, team lead, or project lead–this book will help you succeed with your very next project. Then, it will help you go much further: It will help you transform your entire development organization.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Programming, Management, Software, Technology, Computer Science

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Mike Cohn is one of the contributors to the Scrum software development method. He is one of the founders of the Scrum Alliance.

Reviews

[Arjen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the practice of implementing scrum in your organisation. The theory of scrum is a relatively easy to grasp concept but the actual implementation will more often than not leave you with practical questions.

You can read the book cover to cover but depending on your background and situation you can also cherry pick the chapters you need. Each chapter is packed with handy tips ('things to try now'), typical 'objections' (and counter arguments) and clear diagrams.

What I also like about the book as that it has a kind of iterative feel to it. Reading a chapter makes you grasp the general concept and stimulates you to immediately start implementing the concept with it's hands-on tips. As you become more familiar and experienced with the concepts you can refer back to the book to deepen or update your knowledge and practices.

The 5 stars are rather emotional based since as we are currently adapting scrum as our method of work in our tiny company, this book was exactly what we needed.

[Ahmed Salem · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is focusing on only one thing "How to adapt Agile development (successfully)"! It is business oriented book, so don't expect so much for a cut through plan for agile development process to jump working right now!

It is very recommended for a project manager rather than a developer or a team leader!

Merged review:

The book is focusing on only one thing "How to adapt Agile development (successfully)"! It is business oriented book, so don't expect so much for a cut through plan for agile development process to jump working right now!

It is very recommended for a project manager rather than a developer or a team leader!

[Kalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book! It is easy to read and gives very good advise how to embrace agile.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would highly recommend this book for those who are transitioning to Agile. In particular, I thought the book was well laid out to cover salient points throughout and easily could be read both sequentially or for the busy exec by jumping to a chapter of a particular topic you couldn't wait to learn more about. The "Things to Try Now" tips throughout the chapters I found very helpful and full of immediate, practical advice. The "Additional Reading" at the end of each chapter was also something I highlighted frequently. Normally, I'm a library book consumer but I liked this book so much that I purchased it, eager to refer to it again and borrow it to colleagues.

[Aleksander · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking to introduce Scrum in your organisation or to improve the way it is implemented, you should read this book and keep it close at hand. If you do not already have a working knowledge of Scrum, some Certified ScrumMaster or Certified Product Owner training, say, you should get that first, and then read this book.

Often when reviewing books I condense my key findings, but this is hard in this case. The book is just too expansive, but in a good way. It is to Scrum what Code Complete by Steve McConnell is to programming. Neither are introductory texts, but they are excellent companions for anyone having advanced past that stage.

The first part of the book is about how to introduce Scrum. if you are not about to do this, I think you'll find it a little boring, and despite what Cohn writes in the introduction, it probably can be safely skipped. The next three parts form concentric circles starting with the individual, followed by the team and then the entire organisation. I found the topics covered here to be very illuminating and well-explained, though I still have unresolved questions on topics such as what should before launching a project (business case, initial product log, feasibility) and how to effectively manage an organisation using a lot of Scrum. The book is centred on Scrum the process with a clear bias to software engineering, but it only touches on the software engineering practices that are necessary to succeeding with agile.

Cohn's style is more journalistic than academic. He uses a mix of anecdote, theory and hard data from research and even quotes from agile practitioners. This makes the book very readable. It is also very practical with concrete tips on practices you can try today and ways to handle common objections to Scrum and agile (of which there are many).

[Enlightened · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book you want to read when you want a manual about agile. It's not a reference guide about Scrum either. There are other books for that (e.g. Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process which gets good reviews here on Goodreads). You need some knowledge about agile and Scrum to fully appreciate this book (you don't even need to read a book; the basics are simple enough: http://www.scrumguides.org/). What makes it special and in my opinion a must-have, is the attention to everything surrounding Scrum. OK, you want to do Scrum, so what now? How to get started? Which pitfalls can you expect? What to do when/if...? How to handle this or that? How to react to objections? Etc.

Where I work, we are at the start of our process towards agile and Scrum, and having read this book, there's a ton of things that I can use along the way. This book will be my companion whenever I will face problems, need inspiration, background or tips on our agile journey.

Recommended!

[Russell Folk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seems like a valuable book from a more leadership perspective than everyday engineer which is funny as the book seems to really frown upon the thought of “team leads”. The book has some good points to it though I would not call it an introductory text on agile development practices. It's also a bit too “uppity” throughout for my tastes. I can appreciate what is written and glean some things from it but as someone trying to step in and get a feel for the best practices and all it's too much theory and “pie in the sky” rather than “down to earth” and directly applicable principles for my current situation.

As my career progresses, I’m certain that I’ll refer back to this book. However, at my current stage it isn’t #1 on my list of recommendations for a new dev. 🤷🏻‍♂️
Finally, unless you are directly in a leadership position, you can completely skip the Parts IV and V, chapters 17–22. I should have, and knew I should have, it’s just that I have too much of a completionism streak in me. Admittedly though, that’s why I stalled so long on finishing this book this book—I even read a whole other agile book in between.

[Artem Komisarenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Об'єм книги, особливо в порівнянні з об'ємом книжок Бека, який стояв у витоків Agile, немовби натякая нам, що сучасний SCRUM -- це вже не та гнучка розробка під Маніфестом, а ціла религія, карго-культ, зі звоїми спеціяльними ритуалами та жерцями, яких чи не більше ніж в не-гнучкій розробці часів Брукса.

Значна частина книги присвячена тому, як виставити на посміховисько, ізолювати, подавити, а то й просто виперти з проекту скептиків. Думаю, радянські комсорги, профорги й інша партота знайшли б багато цікавого для себе в цій книзі.

Втім, people хаває, а ворога потрібно знати в обличчя. Сама книга написано непогано, не надто сухо, але й без зайвої води.

[Konrad Sikorski · Rating 5 out of 5]

It will help most when you want to switch you organization to agile. It cover every important topic about switching to agile. You will get todo tasks and many references.

[Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the books published by Addison-Wesley, not only the are well written; the font, the letter size, amazing pictures and tables makes the content very accessible and easy to understand. Definitely, I chose the hard copy over the e-book.

This is a valuable book from a more leadership perspective. The book goes through the main points on how to implement Agile and demystify Agile as easy-all-mighty mindset. The author tables the steps to follow to implement Agile framework (mainly Scrum) and the hard challenges along the way.

You can read the book cover to cover easily but I would not call it an introductory text, it is for leaders who want to understand Agile inserted in an organization and how to implement it.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Cohn know Scrum and this book illustrates that very clearly. This is a very thorough book covering most every aspect of Scrum. Probably more suitable for a coach/trainer or someone who is doing some deep work with a Scrum team. I didn't make it all the way through since many of the details were either familiar, or applicable to larger organizations that I was in. I am glad to have a copy and can see my self referring to it later. If you need to go to the next level in Scrum, this is definitely worth a read, even if you skim through parts, or use parts for reference.

[Christopher Boudreau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A classic primer on how to adopt scrum in your organization

This book was published in 2009 (nearly ten years ago) and was one of the most authoritative works on how to adopt scrum at the time. I wanted to read it to see the context of one of the first mentions of the testing pyramid. These approaches (scrum and testing pyramid) have become the bedrock of current Dev(Sec)Ops development techniques. I rate it 3 out of 5 now because even though modern-day techniques have evolved, it is still worth reading for its fundamentals.

[Mila Ley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Я очень уважаю Майкла Кона, опытнейший и разумнейший профессионал. Книга понятна и написана в его стиле. Единственная проблема - она устарела, поскольку базисом этой книги является преодоление сопротивления в процессе внедрения гибкой разработки. Сейчас, современные компании не сопротивляются внедрению Scrum, а наоборот стараются делать ��се что возможно для его полной интеграции, поскольку свою полезность в мировом опыте уже давно доказал.

Если есть вопросы по внедрению - очень рекомендую, если нет, то стоит обратить внимание на другие его творения.

[Rogelio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good guide to start applying the concepts of agility in the organization. Although this is not a "full implementation guide" it shows the bottom line and the starting points that you can use in your journey.

I would have liked a more comprehensive list of resources to dig deeper, specially in the second part of the book regarding team work, one of the main challenges in scrum.

Summing up, this is a excellent starting point to implement scrum.

[Sergey Shchurko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книга полезная, но достаточно много воды, особенно для разработчика. Я бы советовал ограничиться прочтением 2-ой и 3-ей части (6 - 16 глава) - там содержится самая полезная информация по применению на проекте. Первую часть можно смело пропускать, там мотивационная часть про то, почему стоит начать переход к сраму. 4-ая и 5-ая часть будет полезна не всем и больше нацелена на топ-менеджеров

[Steve Fenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first two parts of this book were a bit too familiar, perhaps I have over-read this subject. However, Part III on Teams made the whole book worthwhile. This entire part was golden and immediately relevant. So for the scattered brilliant bits, I have overlooked the slower moments.

[Tiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an interesting book about improving your agile methodologies. Starts slow and doesn't seem too interesting at the beginning, but picks up to provide lots of insights that are still relevant today.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

This is one of the most conplete book that I have read to esycate a great scrum master or agile coach. I think it's a must seek book for all the professional that whats to evolve and get succeeding with agile.

[Graham Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't believe how verbose the exhortation to value working software over comprehensive documentation is.

[Srdjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great starting book for agile transition

[Lavinia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than any Agile/Scrum training or certification. I highly recommend this book for anyone working with Scrum. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced Scrum Master, this book is gold.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information but the book could be about 70% shorter. It's unnecessarily massive.

[Dávid Molnár · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is massive. It’ll help you with your SCRUM adoption. Not a definitive guide on SCRUM though.

[Henrik Dohlmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

That's how we should do things :-)

[Anjar Priandoyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very honest book, with individual its about resistance, with team is about conflict not teamwork, with the organizatio it need to prepared to abandon everything to survive.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the easiest things to do in print is to praise a strategy or set of tactics used to perform difficult tasks. When all you are doing is simply expounding the stated virtues of a methodology, you are somewhat free to use hype, anecdotal information and instance proofs of success. Implementation details and explanations of logical and frequent difficulties encountered by practitioners of the methodology are ignored or minimized.
That is not the case in this book, Cohn describes the agile software development process and he provides extensive examples of the use of the Scrum methodology and the difficulties commonly encountered. It is easy to understand the hesitation that development teams will have when considering the adoption of Scrum. The development of large software projects is the most complex task that humans have ever undertaken; even a single wrong character out of millions can break a program. The appearance of the relaxation of controls of the process can appear counterintuitive, as it seems that would allow for additional errors to slip through the weakened defenses.
Cohn goes to great lengths to demonstrate how Scrum will strengthen those defenses by reducing the likelihood that errors will survive for very long. Splitting the process into short spurts means that all minds can be on deck and their focus will be on a small set of parameters. This is a way to make minds smarter without actually having to be smarter. Cohn also joins the collective clamor against the extensive use of overtime as a way to compress the time to completion. Evidence going back decades is completely convincing that when it is brainwork, overtime can only increase productivity for a short time. Intellectual fatigue rapidly sets in and after approximately three weeks, the productivity level begins to drop down to less that what is achieved in a standard forty-hour week.
Charts, graphs and tables are used to support the arguments made for the adoption and intelligent use of Scrum. Convincing a team to adopt Scrum is essentially using facts and demonstrated rewards to overcome emotional barriers and the natural unwillingness to execute change. This cannot be done in any way other than by starting with the reality of current problems, giving multiple demonstrations that it can work and then detailed explanations of how to overcome common obstacles that are encountered. Cohn does all of this very well; this book is an excellent point to begin the study and adoption of Scrum.

Published in the online Journal of Object Technology, reprinted with permission.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for pragmatics.
Advice for the harder stuff - how to introduce and spread Scrum, how to get people to let go of doing by design at the start of the project, how to deliver software that works by the end of each sprint, what managers do, and more.

[Danien · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have been implementing agile practices in the studio for a few months and seen some successes and some obstacles. Most of the problems have been with exactly which aspects of agile were right for us. We did not want overly formal adherence to agile standards, but rather something more organic that suited our team. On the other hand, this "looseness" meant that there were many grey areas without easy answers. Many of the situations we encountered are discussed in this book - an indication of how practical it is. That said, it leans towards larger organizations in terms of more formal committees and certain higher level roles, but these can be easily extrapolated for smaller companies like ours.

The solutions presented are generally clear and do not claim to be silver bullets. The author provided a good balance between formal and informal solutions that fit our goals well. Definitely a useful read for everyone involved in transition from traditional development to more agile methods, even those on the periphery of actual development having to support the team(s).

[David Workman]

Preliminary reading shows that this book is definitely not an introduction to scrum and expects a reader to already have quite a good level of scrum comprehension.

It also shows that this book is targeted at people who are looking to migrate a company's practices over to scrum or are in the process of a transition and gives a lot of advice and techniques that the author has used to perform such transitions in the past.

I've put this back to my 'to-read' pile so I can pick it up again once I've gotten a better basic comprehension of scrum principles and practices

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great book on Scrum, from one of the biggest names in Scrum.

This book is most applicable to organisations that are just starting out with Scrum (although a basic understanding of the artifacts / roles / etc. is assumed), or are having problems adapting it. There are lots of examples for organisations of any size (including entire chapters on adapting Scrum to massive projects, dealing with non-colocated teams, etc.), although the primary focus seems to be on midsized colocated companies (e.g. having 5-6 teams of no more than 8 people).