Agile Productivity Unleashed, 2nd Edition

Agile Productivity Unleashed, 2nd Edition

by Jamie Lynn Cooke
Released April 2014
Publisher(s): IT Governance Publishing
ISBN: 9781849285636

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Book description

"... an excellent guide; well structured, well written... It should light many fires in senior management's minds when they think of the problems their projects have had."

Colin Bentley, Ex-Chief Examiner of PRINCE2, from reviews of the first edition

Be part of the Agile revolution

In this new edition of her award-winning book, Jamie Lynn Cooke reveals the secrets of the Agile methodologies that have revolutionized the way that many of the world’s most successful companies operate. Written for business professionals and managers, the book explains the core principles of Agile, shows why these approaches work, and demonstrates how to use Agile to significantly increase productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction in any industry.

Benefits of Agile for your organisation:

  • Proven methods for meeting every project deadline
  • More accurate status reporting with substantially less paperwork
  • A highly responsive adaptive management framework with minimal overheads
  • Greater staff motivation, innovation, and value creation
  • Significantly more efficient use of limited resources and time
  • Strategies for leveraging internal and external changes in the organization, including changing market conditions
  • Better customer relationships, more compelling product development and higher quality outputs through direct stakeholder engagement
  • More effective use of available budgets to deliver real productivity gains across a range of business activities.

    • The key business value of 12 Agile Principles explained

    Agile Productivity Unleashed presents the 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 explaining 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.

    Will it work for me?

    The book concludes by presenting an in-depth case study that compares Agile with traditional approaches for achieving three common business objectives, followed by step-by-step guidelines to make Agile work for your organization, and a range of resources for further reading.

    Buy this book and learn how to unleash the potential of Agile for your organization.

    About the author

    Jamie Lynn Cooke has 24 years of experience as a senior business analyst and solutions consultant, working with more than 130 public and private sector organizations throughout Australia, Canada and the United States. She has been working hands on with Agile approaches since 2003.

    The first edition of Agile Productivity Unleashed won the AXIOM Business Book Awards Bronze Medal for TQM/Productivity Books in 2011

    Table of contents

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

    Product information

    • Title: Agile Productivity Unleashed, 2nd Edition
    • Author(s): Jamie Lynn Cooke
    • Release date: April 2014
    • Publisher(s): IT Governance Publishing
    • ISBN: 9781849285636