Head First Agile

Praise for Head First Agile

“Working on a great agile team can feel magical. Problems, personality conflicts, and project politics fall away through the emphasis and focus on delivering something, learning, and delivering again. But creating such magical teams is hard. It just got easier. Head First Agile is the book many of us have been waiting for. A perfect blend of practical advice, supported by the principles of Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Kanban, Head First Agile can help anyone create a great, magical, agile team.”

— Mike Cohn, Author of Succeeding with Agile, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied

“If you’ve ever worked in a software team, you will immediately relate to the accurate and insightful case studies in Head First Agile. There’s plenty of great advice here that I wish someone had told me earlier in my career. But regardless of how long you’ve been in the software field, you’re guaranteed to find things to learn and new ways of looking at old problems. It was a surprise to me to learn how much more there is to XP than just Pair Programming—and I’m definitely going to be looking at how my team can benefit from these practices and ideas.”

— Adam Reeve, Principal Architect at RedOwl Analytics

“Head First Agile is written in such an easy to digest manner that I found it difficult to put down. Since the book is written as an interaction between people, instead of just providing facts, I feel I have a much better understanding of both the principles and practices of Agile.”

— Patrick Cannon, Senior Program Manager, Dell

“Head First Agile thoroughly explains some very challenging Agile concepts to successfully pass the PMI-ACP exam and re-enforces these concepts with meaningful exercises, real-life stories, and brain-teasing visuals for greater learning retention. The unique format of this book caters to all learning styles and anyone from beginner to expert will benefit from studying this book. Thank you, Andrew and Jennifer, for writing another outstanding Head First book!”

— John Steenis, PMP, CSM, CSPO

“Head First Agile is great! I love how the authors are able to explain the subject matter in a fun, easy to read and understand format. Kudos to Andrew and Jennifer for a job well done!”

— Mark Andrew Bond, Network Operations Project Manager at a higher education institution

“Members of any software development team, in any capacity, Agile based or not, should read this Head First Agile. Teams that have adopted Agile in “whole” or part will better understand how to improve their processes. Teams that are not using Agile can really learn what it takes to start the journey to Agile. For me, this book was a good reflection on projects that succeeded and failed over the last 20 years of my career.”

— Dan Faltyn, Chief Security Officer, BlueMatrix

“Agile has been a buzz word in the industry, which many people talk about and use but without fully understanding the underlying principles and values behind the practices. Head First Agile helps demystify the topic and provides a superb guide into the Agile journey and mindset.”

— Philip Cheung, Software Developer

“Head First Agile shows you that Agile is not a single methodology, but a range of approaches and ways of thinking about the development lifecycle. This book will guide you to find the method that best fits the needs of your team, and to understand how to continually improve over time. Approaches like Kanban, where you establish a pull system by visualizing the workflow and limiting work in progress, can be particularly empowering for teams.”

— Nick Lai, Senior Engineering Manager at Uber Technologies

“What better way to learn about an innovative way to approach work, Agile, than through this ingenious, creative, and ground-breaking approach to learning that engages the whole mind, emotions, and different learning styles. Chuck the boring text books of the past and pick up Head First Agile for a contemporary and intriguing learning experience.”

— Tess Thompson, MS, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSP Agile Transformation Coach and Professor at Saint Mary’s University

“Agile can be a very challenging topic for any PM who is schooled in traditional ways of working. The authors of this book have taken great care to make the topics accessible and they’ve presented the information in a straightforward, concise way that offers not just valuable information you need to be successful at the PMI-ACP exam, but more importantly information you need to be successful in applying Agile in a practical setting.”

— Dave Prior, Certified Scrum Trainer, PMP, PMI-ACP at LeadingAgile

“Head First Agile thoroughly explores practical problems and solutions using a wide array of techniques from the Agile playbook. The authors adeptly explain different types of Agile approaches, providing a great repository of Agile resources to the reader.”

— Keith Conant, Senior Software Engineer at a payments company

“Head First Agile is a great resource because it teaches people not only the practices and methods of Agile, but more importantly the mindset change. This book is based upon the values and principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn about Agile delivery.”

— Mike MacIsaac, Scrum Master, MBA, PMP, CSM

“I am a certified Agile coach at IBM, where I teach and coach people from my organization helping them become Agile. I found Head First Agile to be a great addition to the Agile bookshelves, as well as a wonderful resource to complement the studies of those professionals preparing for the PMI-ACP exam”

— Renato Barbieri, PMP, PMI-ACP, Manager, Agile coach, Kepner-Tregoe Program Leader at IBM

“I am a Project Manager who used Head First PMP to obtain my PMP last year. Head First Agile follows the same concept as Head First PMP... visual thinking and learning to understand, comprehend, and retain the concepts. In a market where quality books for preparation are limited, this was a great resource to have and use for PMI-ACP exam prep. The practice exam questions and Chapter 7 (including Domain Reviews) were really good preparation. The whole thing went great, and I passed on my first try!”

— Kelly D. Marce, Project Manager at a financial services firm