Best Agile Books for Project Managers

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ByElizabeth Harrin Last updated: Books

In this video I share my top picks for books on Agile, especially for those of you new to Agile or considering moving your organization to Agile ways of working.

These are my current favorite books on agile for project managers. Under the video you’ll see details of each of the books mentioned.

All of these will help you learn how to better manage a project in an Agile environment.

Don’t Spook the Herd by Dan Miller

A practitioner guide to Agile. This book has lots of tips that you can take away for how to make agile projects run smoothly, with a focus on people. As it’s people that deliver projects (not methodologies), that’s a great place to start.

This book is available on Kindle and won’t take you long to read.

Agile Project Management for Dummies

There is no shame in reading a book like this, and it’s where I started when I was learning about Agile. Everything key is pointed out to you.

As you’d expect from a Dummies Guide, in this book there are plenty of explanatory boxes, all terminology is explained and it’s written in a very accessible way with an excellent index.

If you aren’t sure whether you should be going ahead with Agile, this is a good introductory guide. It will help you learn the basics and be able to understand the jargon of agile.

Then you can better decide if Agile is a good fit for you, your career and your projects.

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Agile Readiness by Thomas Wise and Rueben Daniel

This is a book about getting your organization ready for a transition to agile ways of working. It looks at 4 different spheres for moving an organization to an agile structure.

The book is a comprehensive guide from respected project management publisher Routledge (previously Gower).

It does lean towards the theoretical, academic guidance, so while you’ll be able to take away some suggestions for how to get your organization ready for a transition to agile, you might find this one heavier going for reading than the other two suggestions.

If you are looking for some other suggestions for project management books to read, you can check these out:

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Best Agile Books for Project Managers
Elizabeth Harrin wearing a pink scarf

Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years.
Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.