In this new edition of her award-winning book, Jamie Lynn Cooke explains the principles of Agile, shows why it works, and demonstrates how to use Agile to significantly increase productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction in any industry. It shows how Agile approaches can give you: A faster, more flexible and highly responsive framework, allowing your organisation to leverage internal and external changes more quickly. Significantly more efficient use of resources and time, freeing up staff for greater innovation and value creation. Direct stakeholder engagement, resulting in better customer relationships and more compelling product development. Written for managers and business professionals, the book presents a range of proven Agile methods including Scrum®, Kanban, Feature Driven Development™ (FDD™) and the Dynamic Systems Development Method® (DSDM®) in clear business language.  The author then devotes a chapter to each of the 12 Agile principles that make these approaches consistently successful, and details how to use these methods to tackle the core challenges faced by every organization. The book concludes with in-depth case study that compares Agile with traditional approaches for achieving three common business objectives, followed by step-by-step guidelines to making Agile work for your organization, and a range of resources for further reading. Read this book and learn how to unleash the potential of Agile in your organization.  

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Preface
• About The Author
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
  • Agile: an executive summary
  • The path forward
• SECTION 1: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AGILE
  • Chapter 1: Agile in a Nutshell
    • Understanding Agile principles
    • Agile in action
    • Popular Agile methods
    • Who uses Agile?
  • Chapter 2: Why is Agile So Effective?
    • Management of controllable risk
    • Minimal start-up costs
    • Initial and ongoing returns
  • Chapter 3: Why Don’t More Organizations Use Agile?
  • Chapter 4: Agile Sounds Good, But
• SECTION 2: 12 AGILE PRINCIPLES THAT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR ORGANIZATION
  • Chapter 5: Responsive Planning
    • Why every upfront plan fails
    • Apply, Inspect, Adapt
    • Defining (and refining) your goals
    • Empowering the delivery team
    • The critical decision points
    • Paving the pathway
    • When to walk away
    • Publicizing your success
  • Chapter 6: Business-value-driven Work
    • Real productivity
    • Dancing around the budget bonfire
    • Over-delivery is wasted money
    • Measuring cost/benefit
    • Communicating actionable goals and priorities
    • Drawing the line
    • When priorities change
    • It’s more than the baton
  • Chapter 7: Hands-on Business Outputs
    • The ‘try before you buy’ power position
    • There is no substitute for reality
    • Mitigating risk
    • Continuous delivery of valuable outputs
    • When the end does not justify the means
  • Chapter 8: Real-time Customer Feedback
    • Every audience is a customer
    • The false security of market testing
    • Intrinsic customer satisfaction
    • The ‘expert by proxy’ myth
    • Hiring a customer
    • Using the customer to manage your budget
  • Chapter 9: Immovable Deadlines
    • Why you should never move a deadline
    • The power of imminent timeframes
    • Early delivery means early payback
    • Setting the next deadline
  • Chapter 10: Management by Self-motivation
    • ‘I’m not going to do it – and you can’t make me’
    • The top-down and bottom-up management myths
    • The power of self-organized teams
    • Giving the team a higher purpose
    • In my estimation
    • Trusting the team
    • Why shorter deadlines lead to happier employees
    • The end of overtime
    • Success breeds motivation
  • Chapter 11: ‘Just-in-time’ Communication
    • When was the last time you attended a valuable meeting?
    • Redefining the corporate meeting
    • What can you do in five minutes?
    • Knowledge transfer through pairing, co-location and cross-training
    • Documentation is no substitute
    • The most valuable meeting of all
  • Chapter 12: Immediate Status Tracking
    • The end of the monthly report
    • Measuring productivity by outputs
    • Tracking overall progress in the requirements backlog
    • Tracking day-to-day work in the delivery backlog
    • The power of the ‘burndown’ chart
    • The real-time executive dashboard
    • Early and continuous delivery tracking
    • Redefining risk management
  • Chapter 13: Waste Management
    • What is waste management?
    • It’s what you don’t do that matters
    • The power and peril of the value stream
    • The waiting game
    • Movement without added value
    • Task-switching and time leakage
    • Doing it right the first time
    • ‘Just-in-time’ versus ‘just-in-case’
    • Maximizing your resources
  • Chapter 14: Constantly Measurable Quality
    • How much does quality cost?
    • Weight control and the bathroom scale
    • True quality requires a culture change
    • The impact of high communication
    • Quality by design
    • Fit-for-purpose outputs
    • The (almost) real-time measuring stick
    • Exponential returns on your quality investment
  • Chapter 15: Rearview Mirror Checking
    • Slight imperfections
    • You only need to glance at the mirror …
    • What a retrospective is – and is not
    • The self-correcting team
    • Changing your travel plans
  • Chapter 16: Continuous Improvement
    • Become better – or become obsolete
    • One step back – five steps forward
    • Regular review and adjustment
    • Quantifying and measuring improvement
    • Bringing it all together
• SECTION 3: A CASE STUDY
  • A Case Study: Traditional versus Agile Approaches
  • Website building in a competitive marketplace
  • Product marketing in a competitive marketplace
  • Order fulfillment in a competitive marketplace
  • But what about my organization?
• SECTION 4: MAKING AGILE WORK IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
  • Chapter 17: Selecting Agile Approaches That Best Meet Your Needs
  • The five fundamental questions
    • The Agile approaches selection tool
  • Chapter 18: Introducing Agile Within Your Organization
    • Dip your toes or dive right in?
    • Choosing the right kick-off point
    • Agile-by-stealth
    • A shared understanding of Agile
  • Chapter 19: Using Agile Tools
    • Responsive budgeting
    • Expected business-value calculation
    • The requirements backlog
    • The burndown chart
    • The delivery backlog
  • Chapter 20: Expanding the Use of Agile in Your Organization
  • More Information on Agile
    • General information on Agile
    • Specific Agile methodologies
    • Industry research on Agile
    • Selected Agile case studies
    • Information on TQM and KAIZEN
    • Cost/benefit calculation resources
    • Other industry resources
• Author’s Note on Agile Resources
• ITG Resources