To all my loyal readers and hopefully many more new ones; you have asked many times for agile book recommendations. Well here they are! I usually purchase ecopies of books like this since they are easier to search and I can carry 1000 of them around on my Droid Bionic. Enjoy and let me know what your favorite books are.
- Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin Toffler
- Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo
- The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century by Stephen Denning
- Software in 30 Days: How Rogue Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, And Leave Competitors In the Dust by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland
- The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber
- Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David J. Anderson
- Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
- Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
- User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
- Succeeding with Agile: Software Development using Scrum by Mike Cohn
- Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans
- Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models by Martin Fowler
- Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 by Steve Resnick
- Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg
- Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Martin Fowler
- Implementation Patterns by Martin Fowler
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
- Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky
- Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck
- The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .Net by Roy Osherove
- Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory
- A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum by Elizabeth Woodward, Steffan Surdek, Matthew Ganis
About Brian Lucas
In his life, Brian Lucas has been a coach, farm worker, forester, health care advocate, life guard, general contractor, mechanic, mixologist, musician/singer (in a rock group), salesman and teacher. Brian has worked as a project manager, technical marketer, methodologist, manager, software architect, systems designer, data modeler, business analyst, systems programmer, software developer and creative writer. These efforts include over a hundred hi-tech initiatives in almost every business and industrial sector as well as government and military projects. Among them, he designed and developed a quality assurance system for the first transatlantic fiber optic communications network, a manufacturing system for a large computer manufacture’s seven manufacturing centers, a data mining system for steel production, an instrumentation system for cable systems, defined requirements for government’s information systems and designed and developed human performance management systems. Brian has educated and mentored many over the years, designing programs to discover and develop talent. He has also lectured extensively to a variety of audiences. Brian is currently devoting as much time as possible to the innovation of business agility and human capital management along with the next generation of agile software development. As an amateur theoretical physicist he is working on joining general relativity and quantum mechanics through a multidimensional time corollary on string theory and negating the uncertainty principle with Louis de Broglie’s wave/particle hypothesis. He is also an avid blue-water sailor and wilderness backpacker. He enjoys billiards, boxing, chess, cooking, famous battle reenactments and war gaming, fencing, flying, gardening, horseback riding, martial arts (particularly Ninjutsu), philosophy and psychology, playing musical instruments (7 so far), poker, rapid-fire target shooting, reading (he tries to read a new book every night), painting with oils, scuba diving, skiing and recently writing novels.
Keeping Agile™ with Brian Lucas 
This is quite a selection of books you are recommending. I was expecting a list of 4 or 5 books. Can you provide a synopsis of each one or some advice which books to start with? Steve
Steve – I roughly sorted this list in the order I would recommend they should be read. If you have a particular need however, feel free to jump right to the book that addresses it. They are all self contained. If you want a synopsis just go online to which ever book seller you use. They almost always have them. -Brian
Hello Brian,
I normally do not post comments. I have felt a little guilty about following your excellent blog and decided I needed to contribute. I have been an agile developer for 5 years and a certified scrum master for 4 years. When I found your post in July I had already read several of the books on your list including The Enterprise and Scrum, User Stories Applied, Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 and A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum. I just finished reading at your recommendation The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management and Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. All of your reading recommendations that I have read have been excellent. I am very impressed with the scope of your reading selection as well. I do not know of any other agile blog that has 20 books on the recommended reading list. Thank you for taking the time to screen these and post your recommendations. I am recommending this list and your blog to all my customers.
Sincerely Laura
Thank you Laura – I appreciate your comment and feelings of guilt. It is always helpful to get feedback from your readership and those that troll a blog and don’t provide it with comments are doing it and themselves a disservice. I am answering this comment out of sequence and actually already answered another comment you made. It is difficult for me to keep up with comments and I try to answer each one, but unfortunately I only get two hours a week in which to blog. -Brian
Great blog! It’s a crime you don’t post every day! This is a very good list Brian. Being a certified scrum master and lead agile developer, I have already read Software in 30 Days by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, The Enterprise and Scrum by Ken Schwaber, Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn and Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn. I am now reading A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum and it is proving to be a very informative read. I am amazed that you find time to read all these. I assume that you have had to sift through some junk to get to this gold list. My question to you is how do you select a book to read? I have read some very junky ones even from famous authors. J. Bowman
Thanks Thanks Jerry – I select books the old fashion way. I get topics by three methods. First, I have bot searches that look for white papers and other internet items of information. Second, I have canned search routines that I periodically run against the major e-book sellers. Third, I also spend time in reflection based on what I already know trying to predict what will happen in the near and distant future. When I find the topic that I want to pursue, it is a simple matter of scanning the synopsis and looking at the author’s history to determine if I want to purchase the book. I have my own version of speed reading I taught myself and read a book a night. It takes me anywhere from one to two hours. I recommend roughly only 10% of the books I read. -Brian
Very comprehensive selection! Reading this library would be an agile education in itself. Thanks!
Brian – this is a great library selection. Thanks for posting! Have you considered posting a synopsis of each? :Judy
Any suggestions as to what to ready 1st?
If you have no particular driving need, I would start at the top of the list and work my way down. Fair warning I will be adding to the list shortly.
Mr. Lucas,
I have been given charge of making my organization more agile. I am finding your blog to be most helpful and this list of books a treasure trove of knowledge and guidance. The orderly way you have laid them out is most appropriate. It would be very meaningful to me if you would be open to some specific questions. You have my gratitude for your work here.
Ramon Toranjo
Good suggestions do you mind if I send you my list for comparison?
Dennis send away I would like to compare your list against mine and see what treasures I missed!
This is a large collection of books Brian, but it is a little slanted towards software development. I as an entrepreneur would like to know more about what books you recommend concerning business management and organization.
Nice book shelf you have here. Where the heck do you find time to do all this reading?
This is a pretty broad ranging selection Brian! I notice that you have not updated it in awhile any new good books out?