Essential Kanban Condensed - David J. Anderson and Andy Carmichael

Kanban is a method of organizing and managing professional services work.
It uses Lean concepts such as limiting work in progress to improve results. A Kanban system is a means of balancing the demand for work to be done with the available capacity to start new work. 
This book provides a distillation of Kanban: the "essence" of what it is and how it can be used. 
This brief overview introduces all the principal concepts and guidelines in Kanban and points you to where you can find out more. 
Essential Kanban Condensed is a great resource to get started or continue exploring ideas for evolutionary change and improvement in business agility.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com  ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.95 out of 5 (21  Ratings; 4 Reviews - As on April 10 2017)
My Rating:  4 out of 5
My Comments:  A very precise summary of The Kanban Method that serves as a great introduction to the topic and provides guidance for further study. 
Probably the first book one should read about The Kanban Method.  

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Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David J. Anderson

Kanban is becoming a popular way to visualize and limit work-in-progress in software development and information technology work. 
Teams around the world are adding kanban around their existing processes to catalyze cultural change and deliver better business agility. This book answers the questions: 
What is Kanban? 
Why would I want to use Kanban? 
How do I go about implementing Kanban? 
How do I recognize improvement opportunities and what should I do about them? 
The author David J. Anderson pioneered the kanban technique with Microsoft in 2004 and has been refining the approach ever since.
This book gives his insights into this new, evolutionary approach to change management.
The Kanban Method will improve your organization's maturity and agility with minimum resistance to change.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com  ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.96 out of 5 (1739  Ratings; 80 Reviews - As on April 9 2017)
My Rating:  4 out of 5
My Comments:  The official and comprehensive introduction to the Kanban Method. Well written with convincing enough arguments to try out Kanban. 

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101 Design Ingredients to Solve Big Tech Problems by Eewei Chen

One page, one ingredient. 101 reasons to become more successful at solving those big technology problems. 
101 Design Ingredients will help your technology team identify problems, share responsibilities, and work better together.

In parts 1 through 4, you'll find 101 problem-solving ingredients grouped into project stages, to help you apply the right ingredient at the right time. 
Start at any point and page through the humorously illustrated ingredients until you find one that matches your needs best. 
The ingredients cover the spectrum your business needs to be successful, with tips on team-building, creating a business model, product launch, productivity, and much more. 
Each ingredient includes three practical suggestions to get you started right away.

In part 5, you'll see examples of how companies can blend some of the ingredients used in this book to solve specific business requirements for investment, innovation, leadership, and more. Each recipe shows how a company fine-tuned six of the ingredients to build their own unique solution. 
You'll learn how to mix and match ingredients to create your own recipes for success, tailored to your company's needs.

The ingredients and recipes in this book can be applied by beginners starting out on their first technology project, as well as seasoned professionals who have been tackling the same big problems for years and need a fresh new approach to problem solving.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.03 out of 5 (30 Ratings; 5 Reviews - As on December 25 2016)
My Rating:  3 out of 5
My Comments: Has got nice cartoons and lots of links which may be of interest. Content wise just OK.


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Making Sense of Change Management - Esther Cameron & Mike Green

A Complete Guide to the Models, Tools and Techniques of Organizational Change
The world we live in continues to change at an intense rate. 
The rate of change and discovery outpaces our individual ability to keep up with it. 
The organizations we work in or rely on to meet our needs and wants are also changing dramatically, in terms of their strategies, their structures,their systems, their boundaries and of course their expectations of their staff and their managers. 
Written for students and professionals alike, Making Sense of Change Management is the classic text in the field. 
It is aimed at readers who want to understand why change happens, how it happens and what needs to be done to make change a welcome concept rather than a dreaded one. 
It offers insights into the many frameworks, models and ways of approaching change and helps the reader apply the right approach to each unique situation.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.17 out of 5 (6 Ratings, 0 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5 
My Comments: Quite a comprehensive & useful guide for change management professionals. Nice explanation of the theories underpinning change management.  


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Adaptive Leadership - Jim Highsmith

Accelerating Enterprise Agility

The agile software movement has now been around for a full decade. 

As coauthor of the original Agile Manifesto, Jim Highsmith has been at its heart since the beginning. 

He’s spent the past decade helping hundreds of organizations transition to agile/lean. 

When it comes to agile, he’s seen it all–in a variety of industries, worldwide.

Now, in Adaptive Leadership , he has compiled, updated, and extended his best writings about agile and lean methods for a management audience. Highsmith doesn’t just reveal what’s working and what isn’t; he offers a powerful new vision for extending agility across the enterprise.

Drawing on what’s been learned in application development, this guide shows how to use adaptive leadership techniques to transform the way you deliver complete solutions, whatever form they take. 

You’ll learn how enterprise agility can enable the ambitious organizational missions that matter most; how leaders can deliver a continuous stream of value; how to think disruptively about opportunities, and how to respond quickly by creating more adaptive, innovative organizations.

Coverage includes

• Discovering and executing new business opportunities far more quickly
• Delivering complete business solutions earlier, and iterating them more often
• Organizing for innovation, and systematically managing opportunity flow
• Clarifying the degree of strategic, portfolio, and operational agility you need, and focusing on your highest-value transformations
• Creating cultures that actually can adapt and learn
• Reinvigorating the roots of agile value and values
• Understanding IT’s changing value proposition, and retraining your people accordingly
• Integrating economics, products, and social responsibility
• Choosing metrics that guide agility, not counterproductive traditional metrics
• Understanding the financial implications of technical debt
• Optimizing business value by doing less–and guiding the process with ”NOT to do“ lists
• Speculating intelligently when you can’t plan away uncertainty
• Customizing management to each project’s needs (because not all projects should be equally agile)

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.74 out of 5 (19 Ratings, 3 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5.  

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The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

How to Get Things Right

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. 
Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. 
But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. 
First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. 
Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. 
Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. 
He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. 
And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4 out of 5 (19634 Ratings, 1982 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5.  

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Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders

In many organizations, management is the biggest obstacle to successful Agile development. 

Unfortunately, reliable guidance on Agile management has been scarce indeed. Now, leading Agile manager Jurgen Appelo fills that gap, introducing a realistic approach to leading, managing, and growing your Agile team or organization.

Writing for current managers and developers moving into management, Appelo shares insights that are grounded in modern complex systems theory, reflecting the intense complexity of modern software development. 

 Appelo’s Management 3.0 model recognizes that today’s organizations are living, networked systems; and that management is primarily about people and relationships.

 Management 3.0 doesn’t offer mere checklists or prescriptions to follow slavishly; rather, it deepens your understanding of how organizations and Agile teams work and gives you tools to solve your own problems. 

Drawing on his extensive experience as an Agile manager, the author identifies the most important practices of Agile management and helps you improve each of them.

Coverage includes

 • Getting beyond “Management 1.0” control and “Management 2.0” fads

• Understanding how complexity affects your organization

• Keeping your people active, creative, innovative, and motivated

• Giving teams the care and authority they need to grow on their own

• Defining boundaries so teams can succeed in alignment with business goals

• Sowing the seeds for a culture of software craftsmanship

• Crafting an organizational network that promotes success

• Implementing continuous improvement that actually works

Thoroughly pragmatic–and never trendy–Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 helps you bring greater agility to any software organization, team, or project.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.12 out of 5 (771 Ratings, 61 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  

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The Innovator's Toolkit - David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, Neil DeCarlo

50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth

The Innovator's Toolkit is an essential companion for every innovator, innovation team leader, operations manager, and corporate change agent who needs to drive organic growth. 
Written and presented in an easy-to-use reference format, the book helps users understand why, when, and how to apply each technique for maximum benefits and results. 
The fifty-plus tools and techniques in this book are organized around a framework for identifying innovation opportunities, generating new and unusual ideas, selecting the best ideas for further refinement, and implementing new solutions that better meet customer expectations.
This revised second edition includes significant updates to nearly two dozen techniques.
Also offers several brand new techniques, including Idea Harvesting and Treatment, Seventy-six Standard Solutions, and Six Thinking Hats
This updated and revised edition of The Innovator's Toolkit simply helps innovation leaders, managers, and specialists do their jobs better than ever before giving them more confidence, greatly reducing the chance of expensive failures, and packing more practical innovation knowhow under one cover than ever before.

 [Book Description Source: www.amazon.com]

Goodreads Rating - 3.84 out of 5 (56 Ratings, 6 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5. 

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(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)
 

Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development - Craig Larman & Bas Vodde

Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum

Increasingly, large product-development organizations are turning to lean thinking, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum to sustainably and quickly deliver value and innovation.

Drawing on their long experience leading and guiding lean and agile adoptions for large, multisite, and offshore product development, internationally recognized consultant and best-selling author Craig Larman and former leader of the agile transformation at Nokia Networks Bas Vodde share the key action tools needed for success.

Coverage includes

• Frameworks for large-scale Scrum for multihundred-person product groups
• Testing and building quality in
• Product management and the end of the “contract game between business and R&D
• Envisioning a large release, and planning for multiteam development
• Low-quality legacy code: why it's created, and how to stop it
• Continuous integration in a large multisite context
• Agile architecting
• Multisite or offshore development
• Contracts and outsourced development

In a competitive environment that demands ever-faster cycle times and greater innovation, the practices inspired by lean thinking and agile principles are ever-more relevant.Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development will help people realize a lean enterprise—and deliver on the significant benefits of agility.

 [Book Description Source: www.amazon.com]

Goodreads Rating - 4.12 out of 5 (60 Ratings, 8 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5. 

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(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)