The Epic Guide to Agile: More Business Value on a Predictable Schedule with Scrum

Before you buy this book, you should understand exactly how epic it is.If this were a cookbook, it would not be a "30 Easy Dinners in 30 Minutes" you can sit down and leaf through in an evening.This would be "How to Cook Everything." It explains the who, what, when, where, why, and how of every step. Not just every step of the Agile process, but the entire process of becoming Agile, the production of Agile products, and how to deal with the changes that need to happen across an organization's whole culture.That level of thoroughness combined with such a complex process means that this is not a small book or a light read. It's organized into digestible chunks, though.The Fundamentals section really is fundamental enough for people new to the concept. The material that's aimed at the technical reader has its own section, Software Construction. Non-IT (or non-IT-minded) people can skip, skim, or return to that later—it's not necessary for understanding the third and fourth sections of the book. Becoming an Agile organization (Part III) and the week-to-week, day-to-day, ceremony-to-ceremony workings (Part IV) could almost be books in themselves. They stand alone well enough that they keep clear of each other—I don't find myself needing to flip back and forth.If the print edition has a flaw, it's a light index. The Table of Contents is very fine-grained, which makes up for it. I'd rather the TOC be as thorough and skimmable as it is, and rely on having also bought the Kindle edition. It's searchable and, as our division's first scrum team gets going, I can lend out the hard copy without losing my guide.

The Epic Guide to Agile has become my go-to guide for managing my Scrum teams. I only wish this book had been written 10 years ago. This book will give you a deep understanding of Scrum. Although I have been working as an Agile practitioner for more than 10 years, I was amazed at how much I learned about the fundamentals, which I thought I was well versed in. This book fills in the gap between the Scrum practices and software construction processes that your team needs to utilize in order to be successful. It will take your Agile teams and your career to the next level, buy it. I had many favourite chapters but There be Dragons the chapter about the challenges you will face when your organization goes Agile, as well as the final chapter on How to deploy to production, makes this book worth 500 dollars alone. Finally, you will enjoy reading this book, Dave writes with passion and keeps you interested all the way.

An excellent practical guide to transforming to Agile.

I am very new to embarking on the journey of understanding Agile and Scrum and what it means in the world of work. I was so grateful when this book appeared serendipitously at the early stages of my research. It is easy to read, peppered with interesting anecdotes and provides a very useful framework for exploration. I would imagine, for even those more experienced, the clarity of the structure and the experiential examples will be massively useful.

There are a lot of Agile and Scrum books out there, all promising to magically transform your development projects from chaos to perfection. This book is different. The guidelines and steps laid on in this book are not some theoretical processes that "should" work, they are actually being used by the author's own development teams to deliver high-quality software applications to their stakeholders at an amazing speed. I know, because I work with a few of these teams!In addition to being a wealth of knowledge, Dave has been able to write a book that is a pleasure to read. With real-world examples, a logical layout, and a sense of humor, The Epic Guide to Agile is a book that a technical, or non-technical person would enjoy.I recommend this book to anyone who needs to deliver results in a software development project.

As Agile coach’s transform their organizations for the digital era, they invariably struggle with issues of cultural change, organizational change, and rigid legacy in the ways of working. They now have this book. In this book they learn to bring together IT and the rest of businesses in the way that can overcome those hurdles. It also has very clear instructions and makes it easy for me, because I have most of my reference in one book.I am right at the “getting started” phase of such a transformation and this book will be playing a major role in our success.There will definitely be a couple of copies floating around management and the team.Dave, thank you for the easy reading style, the excellent explanations and making sure not to miss any detail.

What did I like? This. This chapter - "Confidently Releasing Your Product into Production". This chapter would have saved one of my recent clients so much heartache. This is one of the very few books I have come across that fully addresses moving code AND DATA from development through pre-release and into production in a seamless and confident manner. This chapter is worth 10x the cost of the book, all by itself.BTW, the rest of the book is great, too. Buy it. Read it. Implement it.

Filled with specific principles, processes, and techniques to lead, coach, and guide your team to success. I definitely recommend this book to all professionals and those entering the workplace.