Individuals and Interactions: An Agile Guide - Softcover

Howard, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0321714091 ISBN 13: 9780321714091

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2011

Synopsis

“In my opinion, this is the handbook for Agile teams. I have been wishing for this book since we implemented Agile several years ago. In many Agile process books, the team aspect of Agile has been glossed over in favor of the technical aspects; this book is a welcome change.”

--Sarah Edrie, Director of Quality Engineering, Harvard Business School

 

“Cloud Computing, Distributed Architecture, Test Driven Development...these are simple to master compared to building an agile, efficient, and top-performing team. The path from skilled developer/tester to successful manager, team leader, and beyond is now more easily attainable with the insights, knowledge, and guidance provided by Ken Howard and Barry Rogers in Individuals and Interactions: An Agile Guide.”

--R.L. Bogetti, www.RLBogetti.com, Lead System Designer, Baxter Healthcare

 

“This book provides fantastic insight on how individuals act and relate as a team. Ken and Barry give great examples and exercises to help the reader understand behaviors of each individual and use this knowledge to perform better as a team.”

--Lisa Shoop, Director Product Development, Sabre-Holdings

 

“Individuals and Interactions is a masterfully crafted must-read for anyone who is serious about understanding and applying the human-centered values of Agile development. It is like Patrick Lencioni meets the Poppendiecks to write ‘Agile through the Looking-Glass.’ Here the ‘Looking-Glass’ is the powerful DISC framework, and we see it used to enable different kind of TDD (Team-Driven Development) through the use of stories, examples, models, and guidance.”

--Brad Appleton, Agile coach/consultant in a Fortune 100 telecom company; coauthor of Software Configuration Management Patterns

 

“This book is essential reading for any engineering team that’s serious about Agile development. Its chapters on team dynamics and development lay the foundation for learning all of the factors that enable a team to transform itself into an Agile success story.”

--Bernard Farrell, Consultant Software Engineer at EMC Corporation

 

Great emphasis is typically placed on the “mechanics” of agile development--its processes and tools. It’s easy to forget that the Agile Manifesto values individuals and interactions ahead of processes and tools. You can gain powerful benefits by refocusing on the people side of agile development.

 

This book will show you how. It’s your practical user’s guide to solving the problems agile teams encounter, packed with stories, best practices, exercises, and tips you can actually use. Step by step, you’ll learn how to get teams to truly work as teams, not as disconnected individuals. Along the way, you’ll find profoundly realistic advice on communication, motivation, collaboration, change, group dynamics, and much more.

 

Whether you are an agile project manager, ScrumMaster, product owner, developer, trainer, or consultant, this book will help you make your agile environment more productive, more effective, and more personally fulfilling.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Howard works at Improving Enterprises, where he specializes in helping companies increase productivity through efficient practices and pragmatic organizational dynamics. Ken has been involved in most aspects of software development for more than 26 years with such languages as diverse as COBOL, Smalltalk, and Java. Over the years Ken has provided consulting, training, and mentoring to companies in 12 countries around the world, helping with adoption of software development best practices. He eagerly embraced the opportunity to share many of the things he has learned with a broader audience through the publication of this book.

  

Barry Rogers is President of Improving Enterprises, Dallas, Texas. He is an accomplished Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Practitioner. Barry supports clients in both a hands-on and mentorship/coaching capacity, helping teams adopt agile/Scrum and improve human dynamics. Barry is a Speaker and also facilitates leadership, agile, and project management training sessions.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PREFACE

PREFACE

The Agile Manifesto resulted after that legendary group of individuals met at a Utah ski resort in February, 2001.

It’s ironic that despite buy-in and adoption of the manifesto, most of what has been published, spoken about, and even practiced are things from the right half of the manifesto. You have probably used many of the common agile-related items such as Scrum, user stories, eXtreme Programming, test driven development, product backlogs, task boards, and the list goes on and on. At a high level, the majority of these are either processes or tools. Yet the Agile Manifesto espouses individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

So, why is there so much focus on process and tools? Because they are all enablers of the values depicted in the Agile Manifesto. For example, if you maintain a product backlog as part of the Scrum process, you have a prioritized list of features, and every four weeks (or whatever your iteration cycle is) you develop potentially shippable code. At the end of each iteration, the product owner helps the development team determine what they will develop next. You can easily see that these items enable “responding to change over following a plan”; “working software over comprehensive documentation” and “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.”

The one value that does not get as much attention is “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” One reason for this is because the majority of individuals in our industry started out in college as computer SCIENCE or software ENGINEERING students. Yet individuals and interactions focus more on psychology and human behavior. It is less black and white and less perfect. Arguably the most common and most complex issue companies and project teams typically face is related to human behavior and communication.

In one of the first popular agile books, Agile Software Development, Alistair Cockburn introduced us to agile with an excellent discussion of the human side of developing software. He addressed culture, communication, cooperation, and other “soft” subjects that are at the core of agile. Since that book was published in 2002, there has been sparse coverage.

This book is not intended to take you on a philosophical journey. Instead, it is structured as a user’s guide. Practical information is presented that is relevant to the issues that project teams tend to encounter, with stories, tips, and best practices that can be put into action. In addition, facilitator instructions are included with valuable exercises that you can administer with your team or that can be combined as part of a comprehensive team dynamics workshop.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book is written as a user’s guide to optimizing individuals and interactions on an agile project. Your use of this book may vary based on your role.

If you are a manager, ScrumMaster, or product owner, or play some other leadership role, you may want to make two passes through the book: First, read the chapters to gain a better understanding of your team and why it behaves the way it does. Second, choose activities described in the book and facilitate exercises with your team to improve.

If you are a consultant tasked with helping teams succeed, identify areas needing the most attention and select content and exercises that address those areas. It can be useful to facilitate reading groups (for example, lunch and learn book reviews) where the team reads and discusses one chapter at a time.

Resource

When you see the book icon, look for a reference to a resource that you can dive into for deeper coverage of a topic being discussed. Rather than having to scour through a bibliography at the end of the book, look for sources of great material presented alongside the topics it supports.

If you are a trainer, the book has been designed to provide the ingredients you need to facilitate an Agile Team Dynamics workshop. Instructions for conducting the workshop are described in Chapter 9, "Team Dynamics Workshop."

Lastly, most readers of this book are members of project teams. Some work on agile projects, some may be considering agile, and others have not had the opportunity to work on agile projects. The knowledge and exercises in this book are not exclusive to agile project teams. Understanding behavior and social factors on any project team is the first step to building a cohesive, productive team.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0321714091
• ISBN 13: 9780321714091
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 234