Agile Project Management

Agile project management is the solution people have been looking for.

Born out of sheer need nearly two decades ago, agile project management has grown and expanded past the borders of its software development beginnings. These days, companies in marketing, medicine, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and even governmental institutions employ agile practices to help their processes, to deliver faster, and to be better at everything they do.

To skeptics, agile project management may very well sound like a utopian dream — but in fact, it is the complete opposite of that. Agile project management comes to oppose idealistic views on how projects should be planned. It comes to help you embrace change at its true value and power. It comes to help you deliver better, faster, more qualitative products.

Regardless of what industry you work in, you will find genuine value in agile project management — precisely because it is an approach so flexible and so broad that you simply cannot ignore it these days.

This book will help you:

• Understand what agile project management is
• Understand what agile project management is NOT
• Understand the basic principles behind agile project management
• Understand why agile is needed
• Understand where agile comes from
• Understand why agile has so many advantages (and what they are)
• Understand how to actually apply the 12 Agile Principles to real-life work
• Understand why teams love agile project management
• Understand how to build truly agile teams
• Understand how to deploy and scale up your agile projects
• Understand why, sometimes, agile might not seem to work
• Understand that agile can be a hybrid approach and, as such, it can be implemented in traditional companies
• Understand how agile will ultimately change your life

If you are looking for a one-size-fits-all solution to your project management needs, agile is not it. But, to be absolutely honest, nothing will ever offer this to you. There is no magic solution to delivering faster, better products.

If you are looking for a comprehensive, compelling, and easy-to-understand book that will teach you the basic tenets of agile without oversimplifying the concepts behind it, then this is what you are searching for.

If you want a book that will tell it as it is, a book that will be true to the honesty tenet behind agile project management and won’t sugar-coat the challenges of embracing this approach, then you are in the right place — you have just stumbled upon the agile project management book you need to start out in the world of agile (and do it on the right foot).

1. History, Benefits, and Tenents of Agile Project Management
• History of Agile
• Advantages of Agile Project Management
• Better Quality
• Better Customer Satisfaction
• Better Transparency
• Better Control
• Better Predictability
• Better Risk Management
• Better ROI
• Better Metrics
• Better Collaboration
• Better Work-Lfe Balance
• The Main Principles of Agile Project Management
• The Agile Manifesto
• The 12 Agile Principles
2. Understand the Principles of Agile Project Management
• Customer Satisfaction
• Making and Managing Changes
• Contonuous Customer Input
• Daily Meetings
• Sustainable Development
• Continuous Improvement
• Simplicity as a Vital Element
• Self-Organizing Team
• Inspect and Adapt
3. Implementing Agile: How to Apply the APM Method Effectively
• Define Your Vision
• Life Cycle Selection
• The Predictive Life Lycle
• The Iterative Life Lycle
• The Incremental Life Lycle
• The Adaptive Life Lycle
• Creating an Agile Environment
• Setting the Example
• Being a Leader
• Adopting Critical Thinking
• Stimulating Collaboration
• Plan "Just Enough"
• Encouraging Face-to-Face Conversations
• Creating the Physical Agile Environment
• Delivery in an Agile Environment
• Organizational Consideration for Project Agility
• Call to Action
4. Tools and Methodologies for Quality Control in APM
• Clarizen
• Trello
• GitScrum
• Jira
• Taiga
• Nostromo
• Hansoft
• Blossom
• Ravetree
5. Managing Risk in Agile Project Management
• Classify
• The Descriptive Method
• The PESTLE Method
• Quantify
• Plan
• Act
• Repeat
6. Scaling Agile Projects
• The Scaling Challenge
• Scaling at Team Level
• Scaling at Project Level
• Scaling at Company Level
• Agile Scaling Methods
• SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
• DaD (Disciplined Agile Delivery)
• LeSS (Large Scale Scrum)
• Nexus
• LeadingAgile
• The Scrum of Scrums
• Building Agile Teams
• Be Patient
• Adapt to Change
• Be Results-Driven
• Don't Miss the Bigger Picture
• Be Transparent
• Ask for Feedback
• Give Feedback on a Regular Basis
• Show Trust — Always
• Have Clearly Defined Roles
• Encourage Team Members to help Each Other
• Make Your Office a Comfortable Place
• Maintain the Stability of the Team
• Listen
• Believe
• Scaling Up: Agile Practices
• Start with the MVP — The Minimum Viable Product
• Use One Product Backlog
• Make Sure Everyone Understands the Process
• Emphasis on Collaboration
• Trainings, Courses, and Certifications
• Improve Your Development Infrastructure
• Stick to Smaller Teams
• Coordinate the Production Time with the Iteration Length
• Make Sure Someone Is the Product Owner
• Synchronize the Iterations Across Teams
• Use the Right Tools
• Face to Face Meetings and Team Buildings
• Scaling Out: Disturbed Projects
• Conclusion

Sigh, I had high hopes for this book. But it is obviously written by a moron that doesn't know project management, which leads to outrageous claims for Agile versus Waterfall, that gets a real project manager to think he doesn't understand anything. As an example, he describes the revolutionary concept of breaking down tasks in lesser, and more detailed tasks, as something totally unique to Agile (anyone heard about Work-Breakdown Structures, a basic block of project management?), or that Waterfall methods only evaluate risks in the beginning of projects (check Prince2, IPMA, PMI, etc and you'll find that constant risk management, handling, and updating is at the core). 

The moron explains that having intermediate goals is a good and unique thing in APM, but he obviously has never heard of Milestones…

This is a book best avoided, as drivel like this will scare people away from APM, instead of adapting the parts that are good.