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This is the definitive, realistic, actionable guide to starting fast with Scrum and agile - and then succeeding over the long haul. Leading agile consultant and practitioner Mike Cohn presents detailed recommendations, powerful tips, and real-world case studies drawn from his unparalleled experience helping hundreds of software organizations make Scrum and agile work.

Succeeding with Agile is for pragmatic software professionals who want real answers to the most difficult challenges they face in implementing Scrum. Cohn covers every facet of the transition: getting started, helping individuals transition to new roles, structuring teams, scaling up, working with a distributed team,and finally, implementing effective metrics and continuous improvement.

Mike Cohn

http://www.succeedingwithagile.com/table-of-contents

Scrum and Kanban are two flavours of Agile software development - two deceptively simple but surprisingly powerful approaches to software development. So how do they relate to each other? The purpose of this book is to clear up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your environment.

Part I illustrates the similarities and differences between Kanban and Scrum, comparing for understanding, not for judgement. There is no such thing as a good or bad tool – just good or bad decisions about when and how to use which tool. Part II is a case study illustrating how a Scrum-based development organization implemented Kanban in their operations and support teams.

Consistent with the style of “Scrum and XP from the Trenches”, this book strikes a conversational tone and is bursting with practical examples and pictures.

Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin

http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook

Changing anything often invokes fear in people; it is something new and, as such, we don’t know what is involved. We are naturally skeptical of the unknown and, of course, there is always a chance we might not be very good at it, or even worse, might look silly while trying. While a team can grab on to something as simple and effective as Scrum quite quickly, all the associated changes that spring up as a result can cause significant worries. There are some very common broad issues that I warn people to look out for when adopting Scrum in an organization as well as a whole host of nuances that will almost inevitably crop up at some time as well.

I share a few of them in this article so that you can be prepared for them or, perhaps, not feel too bad that you are experiencing them yourself – they are common.

Geoff Watts

http://www.infoq.com/articles/making-scrum-stick

Agile software development methodologies such as XP, Scrum, DSDM and Crystal Clear are becoming wildly popular. They map to today’s new technologies, and they allow organizations to react quickly to changing needs. One of the most popular of these is proving to be Scrum. From the rugby term, scrum is a philosophy and development approach that focuses on iteration and close collaboration with the goal of creating increments of ‘shippable’ product every few weeks.

Daptiv Scrum gives agile development teams powerful tools to manage Scrum and gives businesses better visibility into Scrum work. Scrum is a flexible process, so naturally a flexible tool can help you to run the process better. Unlike prescriptive tools that force you into one particular flavor of the Scrum process, Daptiv Scrum lets you choose your flavor and easily configure the solution to work with your process. Daptiv Scrum comes ready with the key roles, applications and artifacts you need to manage Scrum in your organization. Start with the included roles – Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team Member and Executive Stakeholder – or create new custom roles.

http://www.daptiv.com/solutions/daptiv_scrum/index.htm

Recently I’ve been seeing lots more about Kanban development in discussion groups, articles, and at conferences. The surprising thing for me is that many smart Agile people — people I know to be intelligent insightful people seem bugged by Kanban — seem to see it as threat to Agile thinking. Others see it as using new trendy words to describe best practices we already understand. Basically, I keep running into a lot of grumpy agilistas and a few Kanban fanatics. And, the reason I think this is weird, is that I’m seeing Agile people behave as strangely about Kanban as traditional process folks behaved about Agile. They seem threatened. They see Kanban as a fad.

For me I find great value in Lean and Kanban thinking. I do use Kanban ideas in all the Agile teams I coach. And, I do use strict Kanban, WIP limits and all, with a couple teams. No one’s been hurt by it yet. And if it was the rebranding of already known best practice, possibly I was too dense to get it before hearing it clearly described in the Kanban metaphor.

Jeff Patton

http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/2009/kanban_over_simplified.html

As a customer or supplier of software services at the beginning of a Software Development Project, you know that there is too much at stake to work with just a verbal agreement. A contract is really just a set of written playing rules. The right rules increase the chance of success for both parties. The wrong rules make cooperation difficult and hinder progress. What are the available playing rules and what is the best approach for a agile project?

Peter Stevens

http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/peterstev/10-agile-contracts

About 80 percent of software houses around the world are small companies. Compared to the large companies, small shops typically have advantages in terms of agility, performance, motivation, and focus. What they don’t often have is validation that the processes they use to deliver software also focuses on quality — the type of validation usually reserved for large organizations that have adopted capability models like CMMi.

However, Codice Software is a small company that adheres to both Agile methodologies (SCRUM) and process improvement (CMMi). In this article, I explain why we pursued CMMi evaluation during the development of Plastic SCM (a configuration-management and version-control tool), what went smoothly, and what difficulties we had in making our SCRUM process fit within CMMi rules.

Pablo Santos

http://www.ddj.com/architect/201202684