Agile 2010 Booklist

19 comments | Posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Agile2010, Reading'

At Agile Coach Camp Germany 2010, Marc Bless walked around and asked participants: which one book should I read. The result was this list.

As I liked this idea a lot, I did the same at Agile 2010. Only I did not say “what is the one book I should read.” Actually I asked people to give me one name of a book to put on the list. Some people asked me what the list was for (suprisingly not everyone) I gave a diversity of answers to that question (hoping for a diversity in books).

These were some of the answers I gave:

- the one book that I should read
- the one book that everyone in agile should have read
- the one book that changed your life
- the book you think is missing in this list
- …

I only had 2 rules:

- Only one book
- It can’t be on the list already

This is the list they put together:

When I write this blog post, I am very happy about the list, it contains a lot of books I like, it contains books I have sitting on my shelve waiting to read and it contains books I did not know  and look promissing…

And that while I found three book at my clients office today that should have arrived before my holiday and a kindle 3 on his  way to become mine, life is good…

Update: Thanks to JB’s comment  I now have a nicer view to these books:







19 Responses to “Agile 2010 Booklist”

  1. Marc Bless says:
    August 25, 2010 at 01:09

    Thanks Yves, for continuing this work at Agile 2010. Let’s go on with these surveys at conferences and camps.

  2. Markus Gaertner says:
    August 25, 2010 at 07:55

    The one book that is missing from both lists, but that I found the most beneficial, is Alistair Cockburn‘s Agile Software Development – The Cooperative Game, 2nd edition. It explains in large why Agile works, and on which factors to take a closer look. It’s rather long compared to other books, but it’s definitely worth reading.

  3. Nick Oostvogels says:
    August 25, 2010 at 08:45

    Great idea Yves!
    I always look for books that people recommend. Great post!
    I agree with Markus, the Cooperative Game was and still is the book about agile I recommend to everybody.

    My other favourite would be ‘The Goal‘ by Eliyahu Goldratt.

  4. yhanoulle says:
    August 25, 2010 at 09:07

    Hey Markus & Nick cool that you add your own books to this list.
    The rules stay the same: add a new book and only one book.

    I will edit the comments and add the book links (I just found out I can edit comments, not sure if it is a good thing, but at least I can add the links.)

  5. yhanoulle says:
    August 25, 2010 at 09:08

    @Marc: If I see a good idea I will use it everywhere (and give credit if I remember from who I borrowed it.)

  6. J. B. Rainsberger says:
    August 25, 2010 at 11:43

    If you have a librarything.com (go open one), you could make a list of these books and share it. Highly recommended.

  7. yhanoulle says:
    August 25, 2010 at 11:45

    I have a librarything account and it actually has +500 books on it.
    Actually the book page on this blog shows all the books on my libarything account.

    Great idea.
    I will add the Agile2010Booklist tag to all these books.

  8. Marc Löffler says:
    August 25, 2010 at 12:28

    Thanks for the list. Here is my personal book recommendation:

    Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn

    - marc

  9. John McFadyen says:
    August 25, 2010 at 14:36

    Good to see the idea living on. My recommendation would be The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

  10. Chris Matts says:
    August 26, 2010 at 00:23

    Great list. I would add “accelerated learning handbook” by David Meier (sp?)

  11. yhanoulle says:
    August 26, 2010 at 00:32

    @Chris this is on my reading list for so long, … Gues I have to start reading it…

  12. Daniel Teng says:
    August 26, 2010 at 14:52

    It is a great list, thanks for sharing.

    I also want to add my favorite, it is a very old and small Chinese book. “Tao Te Ching” (Free online version http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html) by Laozi

  13. Declan Whelan says:
    September 2, 2010 at 07:23

    +1 on for “The Fifth Discipline” suggested by John McFadyen. Since John already suggested it I would add “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code” by Martin Fowler.

  14. Bachan Anand says:
    September 12, 2010 at 23:58

    Great Idea Yves. I plan to do the same at the Agile Open Southern California event (http://agileopencalifornia.com/content/view/19/46/) planned for this week. Will come back and post the results here.

  15. yhanoulle says:
    September 13, 2010 at 16:47

    Thanks Bachan,

    One thing I did regret from my list, is that I started from scratch.
    I could have started from the original list.
    That way we could create a very big list of unique books.
    Would you be willing to start from my list?

    Yves

  16. yhanoulle says:
    September 27, 2010 at 10:53

    Another list of Agile and Lean books:
    http://agile.dzone.com/articles/dzones-top-10-agile-and-lean

  17. Geoff says:
    October 4, 2010 at 00:10

    This book (and author) changed my (programming) life
    Robert Martin: Clean Code http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882

  18. Agile 2011 Booklist | Yves Hanoulle says:
    August 8, 2011 at 08:12

    [...] year at Agile 2011 I walked around and created a booklist together with lots of people. Although this year I decided not to go to the conference, I still want to create a similar [...]

  19. Who is Mary Poppendieck | Yves Hanoulle says:
    August 30, 2011 at 20:34

    [...] that blows me away. And Tom deserves a mention as probably the agilist that read most books. When I walked around with my booklist at agile 2010 I think Tom was the only person who know and probably had read all books. Impressed. Oh and Tom is [...]


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