Agile Business: A Leader's Guide to Harnessing Complexity is an engaging introduction to Agile Development from a business perspective.
Summary
Title: Agile Business: A Leader's Guide to Harnessing Complexity
Author: Bob Gower
Themes: Agile; Culture; Management; Teams; Leadership; IT
Year: 2013
Publisher: Telemachus Press
ISBN: 1939337534, 9781939337535
Pages: 260
Agile Business by Bob Gower is a comprehensive guide for companies to become more agile and stay competitive. Featuring the latest developments in agile methodology, the book provides an in-depth overview of the benefits, challenges, and strategies of agile business.
Gower introduces key concepts such as rapid prototyping, customer centricity, value creation, and continual improvement, and explains how to use these principles to become more efficient, flexible, and responsive.
The book contains practical real-world advice from over 30 coaches, executives, developers, and managers who are actively using Agile in their organizations and helping others achieve Agility.
Written in a way that can be easily grasped and put to use whether you have previous Agile experience or not.
Whether you're looking for an introduction to the topic or want to deepen your own practice, Agile Business will help you understand and apply Agile principles to your business and your life.
Agile design practices encourage us to test our ideas quickly using tools like rapid prototyping and to see our products in their natural habitat.
Some of the key highlights include:
- Adopt an agile mindset and use agile methodology to address constant change.
- Utilize rapid prototyping to create quick, effective solutions.
- Focus on customer-centricity to understand customer needs and deliver value.
- Create an environment of continual improvement to stay ahead of the competition.
- Prioritize collaboration and communication to ensure a smooth transition to agile.
- Balance innovation and experimentation with a focus on achieving results.
My Book Highlights:
"... Building the wrong thing not only wastes time and money, it demoralizes the creative, intelligent and in-demand team members who are working on the products, thus making hiring and retention more difficult..."
"... We know Agile is good for business, but we also believe it’s good for people. Agile practices, with their emphasis on problem solving and efficiency, have the potential to help solve some of the toughest problems facing humanity. And we believe Agile is an important part of creating meaningful job opportunities for more people..."
"... Agile principles that help Build the Thing Right are: team empathy for end user, requirements discovery and elaboration methodologies like Scrum or Kanban, local planning—those who do the work, plan the work—and team autonomy to “pull” work at their own pace and coordinate with other teams..."
"... This is the goal of the Agile mindset: to remove waste by creating an organization that focuses on discovering customers’ needs and meeting those needs quickly and affordably..."
"... Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system..."
"... Agile is whole-system way of looking at, and acting on, your business. We work on the habits, individual attitudes, and organizational structures that support business as usual, and then we interrupt those patterns and build better organizations and products..."
"... Like W. Edwards Deming, Agile managers believe “the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure.” A strong leader focuses on working the system, not the people..."
"... When trial is cheap and error is knowledge, we gain the ability to progress our solutions to the problems we are trying to solve—not just ship products out the door..."
"... If we are to transform our organizations, we must find a way to turn the wasteful, vicious cycles that derail us into virtuous cycles that create value..."
"... Agile principles that help treat people as People, not Resources, are: collaboration, servant leadership, self-organization and management, individual control of the work environment, and organizational transparency..."
"... It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong..."
"... Agile principles that help with Agile Steering are: a steady cadence of planning, multi-level planning practices, transparency, retrospectives, information radiation, and staged funding..."
Something as easy as hosting a weekly, catered lunch during which your team watches customers actually use the product, can build team empathy and generate new ideas. I’ve never seen a team that does this enough.
As more organizations adopt agile, new ideas are being developed to improve planning, road mapping, and innovation. These pioneers are taking the process of building products to the next level through a deep understanding of the methods and principles of agile
Chapters of the Book:
Foreword, by Brad Feld
A Message from the Founder, by Ryan Martens
Preface
How to Use This Book
Introduction
1. Build the Right Thing
Build the Right Thing
Agile and Innovation
The Role of the Product Owner
The Gift of Meaningful Work
How Large Organizations Can Act More Like Startups
The Minimum Viable Product
Start with Why
Story Mapping
Information Radiators
Paper Prototyping
2. Build the Thing Right
Build the Thing Right
Agile Test and Engineering Practices
Scrum and Kanban
Scrum or Kanban?
Reciprocal Commitment
The Art of the Hackathon
Agile Metrics
Continuous Integration and Delivery
The Value of Play
Flow
Tools
Why Define Done?
3. People, Not Resources
People, Not Resources
Agile Managers
The Agile Project Manager
Agile Organizations—Daring Greatly
Create Your Own Reality
Everyone Be Agile: Nine Extraordinary Benefits Nondevelopment Departments Enjoy
Facilitating the Right Environment
Why Coaching?
Agile in Distributed Environments
The Importance of Space
Co-located Teams
Sustainable Pace
Audio, Video, and Virtual Team Realities
Social Contracts
A Culture of Great Meetings
Servant Leadership
Trusting in Conflict
4. Agile Steering
Agile Steering
Agile Portfolio Steering
Funding and Accounting in an Agile World
Planning Releases and Tracking Progress
Scaling Agile: Fractals of Innovation
Steering the Agile Enterprise with Kanban Thinking
Retrospectives: : The Heartbeat of Continuous Improvement
Agile Contracts
Stickies, Sharpies, and Information Radiators
The Daily Standup
The Sprint Review and Demo
5. Transform Your Organization
Transform Your Organization
Flow-Pull-Innovate—Your Agile Journey
A Path to Agility
Agile Measurement
The Importance of Vision and Culture
Agile Selling: Pulling Sales Forward
Agile Rollout Planning: It’s the Planning, Not the Plan
How to Launch a Team
When Your Organization Is Waterfall and You’re Not
Other contributors that shared some knowledge in this book:
- Alex Pukinskis
- André Dhondt
- Ann Konkler
- Ben Carey
- Brendan Walsh
- Brent Barton
- Charles Ferentchak
- Chris Browne
- Eric Willeke
- Isaac Montgomery
- Jean Tabaka
- Jeff Ellis
- Jessica Kahn
- Jim Tremlett
- John Michael Martin
- Julie Byrne
- Julie Chickering
- Karl Scotland
- Ken Clyne
- Larry Maccherone
- Laura Burke
- Liz Andora
- Mark Kilby
- Michael Ball-Marian
- Niki Kohari
- Rachel Weston Rowell
- Rick Simmons
- Ronica Roth
- Ryan Martens
- Sean Heuer
- Stephanie Tanner
- Steve Lawrence
- Tamara Nation
- Todd Olson
- Zach Nies
In conclusion, Agile Business by Bob Gower is a must-read for entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to remain competitive and embrace change.
Gower offers an in-depth overview of agile methodology, practical strategies, and actionable advice to help companies become more agile, adaptive, and responsive.
With its comprehensive approach and unique insights, the book is sure to leave readers inspired and equipped to become agile business leaders.
Bob Gower, is passionate about innovative products and the people who make them. An author, speaker, and consultant, Bob has spent more than 15 years leading complex, creative projects across myriad sectors. He’s currently an Agile Coach for Rally Software, where he specializes in enterprise-level Agile transformations.
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