I wrote this for a company blog in 2015. I still have and use all of these books through several generations of the iPad. My library has grown considerably since I wrote this in early 2015.
No one person can hold all knowledge in their heads so the next best thing is to understand that all of us need to continuously learn from each other. One learning that I’ve had is to use my tech to keep a digital library of resources at my fingertips. If you have a kindle, iPhone, or iPad (or even an Android device?) use it. Load up the Kindle app and start a reference library.
Suggested books for the starter library would be
- Essential Scrum by Kenny Rubin (great guy with a really good book on scrum mechanics)
- Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (this is a very insightful book on the soft skills necessary to high performing teams)
- Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution by Diana Hamilton (this really is a Zen Buddhist approach to taking ourselves and others through problems)
- Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers by Dave Gray (a concise book of active learning games to teach teams about themselves and each other)
- The Ancient Art of War by Sun Tzu (a centuries old short book about war; much of it can be applied to how the world around us works)
- Becoming a Catalyst: Using Everyday Interactions to Accelerate Culture Change by Len Lagestee (gives a local/global point of view on how we can work with our teams and affect change in the teams around us by being the best scrum master possible and taking our teams along with us on the Agile journey)
- Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Guide to Spirituality by Chris Grosso (while not an Agile book, there are some great gems to be mined on what makes different types of people tick and why)
Read, read, read. The talk, talk, talk.
