Appendix A. Recommended reading and other resources

We both are avid readers and have read many texts over the years that influenced us and taught us a lot about kanban, Lean, agile, and more. In this appendix we share our top list of works to learn from.

We’ve grouped them by topic and given a sentence or two to tell you a little about each item, why we chose it, and what we find about it that’s particularly good.

A.1. Books on Lean and kanban

  • Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business (David J. Anderson, Blue Hole Press, 2010, http://amzn.com/0984521402)—This is the book in which David J. Anderson defines and explains the Kanban Method. It’s basically a must-read if you’re interested in kanban. This book will teach you everything about how David and others came up with kanban and why and how it works.
  • This Is Lean: Resolving the Efficiency Paradox (Per Åhlström and Niklas Modig, Rheologica Publishing, 2012, http://amzn.com/919803930X)—This great little book clearly explains the foundational thinking behind Lean and delivers a good definition of what Lean means. It’s written by Professor Per Åhlström and researcher Niklas Modig from the Stockholm School of Economics and is an easy read of about 160 pages.
  • The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement: Linking Strategy and Operational Excellence to Achieve Superior Performance (Jeffrey K. Liker and James K. Franz, McGraw-Hill, 2011, http://amzn.com/0071477462)—This book is the result of 20 years of studying Toyota and other Lean companies. It describes the philosophy and principles behind the Toyota Way and how Toyota implements the Toyota Production System in its daily business. The authors also share their advice on how you can change your company into a learning organization.
  • Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness, and Superior Results (Mike Rother, McGraw-Hill, 2009, http://amzn.com/0071635238)—Rother looks beyond what Toyota does and tries to understand how and why. He then formalizes this into a method called the Toyota Kata. It’s a real eye-opener. The Kanban Kata that we talk about in chapter 10 is based on this book.
  • The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development (Don Reinertsen, Celeritas Publishing, 2009, http://amzn.com/1935401009)—This dense book on product development contains 175 principles synthesizing knowledge from a vast array of fields, from telecommunications networking to military doctrine, into a second-generation Lean theory that goes beyond the faith-based approach and advocates applying an economic view to decisions.
  • Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban (Henrik Kniberg, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2011, http://amzn.com/1934356859)—This book presents a short case study on implementing Lean and kanban in the Swedish Police. The author is one of the prominent agile figures in Sweden.

A.2. Books on agile

  • Scrum and XP from the Trenches (Henrik Kniberg, Lulu.com, 2007, http://amzn.com/1430322640 or free as a downloadable PDF at www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches)—This book is an excellent, pragmatic introduction to Scrum and some agile practices. It has been the start of the agile journey for many people, including Marcus. Thanks, Henrik!
  • Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (Kent Beck, Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999, http://amzn.com/0201616416)—This book is an introduction to extreme programming (XP), one of the first agile methods. It describes several of the most important agile practices used by many kanban teams.
  • The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software (Jonathan Rasmusson, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2010, http://amzn.com/1934356581)—This book is short, pragmatic, fun, and a good introduction to agile and a lot of practices around it. It includes many practical tips and can be used as an introduction. We’ve left this book with clients we’ve visited as reference literature.
  • The Art of Agile Development (James Shore and Shane Warden, O’Reilly Media, 2007, http://amzn.com/0596527675)—This detailed introduction to many agile practices (particularly XP) is great for the novice and advanced beginner, but it also presents some new perspectives and good exercises for more experienced practitioners.

A.3. Books on software development

Even though this isn’t a book on software development as in writing code, we have found the following books interesting and have learned a lot from them that we can use in practice to assist our kanban teams:

  • Specification by Example: How Successful Teams Deliver the Right Software (Gojko Adzic, Manning, 2011, www.manning.com/adzic/)—Specification by example is a practice to ensure that you’re building the right thing: what’s needed, not only what the customer wanted. This book does an excellent job of describing all the aspects and consequences of specification by example (a.k.a. behavior-driven development or acceptance-driven development).
  • Test-Driven Development: By Example (Kent Beck, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2002, http://amzn.com/0321146530)—This book provides a great introduction to test-driven development (TDD) through a thorough case study that shows you the how-tos in small, fine-grained steps.
  • Growing Object-Oriented Systems Guided by Tests (Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2009, http://amzn.com/0321503627)—In this book (known in inner circles as the GOOS book), the authors show how TDD can be applied in the larger world. It includes a lot of practical examples and tips throughout.
  • Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin, Prentice Hall, 2008, http://amzn.com/0132350882)—This is a must-read for any agile developer. It shows you how to write clean and maintainable code. It will probably also make you ashamed of your own code (as it did for Uncle Bob himself).
  • The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers (Robert C. Martin, Prentice Hall, 2011, http://amzn.com/0137081073)—Uncle Bob turns his attention to the professional developer and scrutinizes what it means to be a great developer. This is done through many anecdotes and funny stories that make you think about your profession in a new way.

A.4. Books on business and change management

  • The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Eliyahu M. Goldratt, North River Press, 2012, http://amzn.com/0884271951)—Imagine writing a book on the Theory of Constraints. Imagine how boring that book could be. This is the opposite. It’s a gripping and entertaining novel that teaches you about the Theory of Constraints while following the destiny of Alex Rogo. This is done in such a subtle way that you almost don’t notice it until you’re done. It’s one of the best books we’ve read!
  • Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Crown Business, 2010, http://amzn.com/0385528752)—This book teaches you about making changes: personal changes, helping others change, and changes to organizations. It gives you a practical framework for making changes and contains loads of examples and studies to back it all up. This book made us feel almost as though we were cheating by knowing all these techniques when we’d finished reading it. You can get that feeling, too!
  • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House, 2007, http://amzn.com/1400064287)—Here’s another great title by the Heath brothers that talks about making your ideas sticky, which in turn is a way to improve the change process. It provides lots of cases (the opening case will stick with you forever, as an example) and practical tips.
  • Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas (Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising, Addison-Wesley, 2004, http://amzn.com/0201741571)—This book contains a lot of small patterns: ways, thoughts, and practices that can help you bring about change. After a short narrative about the ideas behind the patterns, the book presents a long list of patterns that you can start tomorrow. It’s a must-have for any change agent.
  • The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Eric Ries, Crown Business, 2011, http://theleanstartup.com/book, http://amzn.com/0307887898)—This book talks about applying Lean concepts to ideas: more specifically, business ideas; and even more specifically, startup ideas. These ideas range from using the scientific method for exploration to A/B testing to validate your hypothesis. Soon after reading it, you’ll start to realize what many others have seen: Lean Startup can be applied to your business regardless of whether you’re a startup.

A.5. Other resources

Although we both read a lot, the kanban community is moving fast. In order to keep up with the latest news and happenings, we follow a lot of online resources such as mailing lists, blogs, and Twitter accounts. Here are a couple of our favorites:

  • Kanban dev Yahoo mailing list— This is an extremely active mailing list for all things kanban. All the big names in the Lean software development movement are active on the list, and you’ll be sure to get great answers fast. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/.
  • Personal Kanban 101— This site introduces the ideas of Personal Kanban. http://mng.bz/61Zn.

A.5.1. Noteworthy blogs

Here are some of the blogs and sites that we often visit:

A.5.2. Noteworthy Twitter accounts

Here are some of the Twitter accounts that we follow on Lean, kanban, and agile, in alphabetical order:

Chris Achouiantz @ChrisAch Gojko Adzic @gojkoadzic Agile Borat @AgileBorat David J. Anderson @djaa_dja Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo Kent Beck @KentBeck Jim Benson @ourfounder Jabe Bloom @cyetain Pawel Brodzinski @pawelbrodzinski Martin Burns @martinburnsuk Mike Burrows @asplake George Dinwiddie @gdinwiddie Håkan Forss @hakanforss Torbjörn Gyllebring @drunkcod Kurt Häusler @Kurt_Haeusler Ron Jeffries @RonJeffries Liz Keogh @lunivore Henrik Kniberg @henrikkniberg LeanKanbanConference @LeanKanban LeanKit @LeanKit Klaus Leopold @klausleopold Janice Linden-Reed @jlindenreed Bob Marshall @flowchainsensei Henrik Mårtensson @Kallokain Uncle Bob Martin @unclebobmartin Benjamin Mitchell @benjaminm Niklas Modig @LeanOnMyself Dan North @tastapod Michael (Doc) Norton @DocOnDev Staffan Nöteberg @staffannoteberg Jeff Patton @jeffpatton Mary Poppendieck @mpoppendieck Jonathan Rasmusson @jrasmusson Donald Reinertsen @DReinertsen Karl Scotland @kjscotland Al Shalloway @alshalloway James Sutton @LeanSE Jean Tabaka @jeantabaka Adam Yuret @AdamYuret Woody Zuill @WoodyZuill
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset