Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders

by Jurgen Appelo

Overview

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.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780321718990
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	12/28/2010
Series:	Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jurgen Appelo is a writer, speaker, trainer, developer, entrepreneur, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, and freethinker. And he’s Dutch, which explains his talent for being weird.

 

After studying software engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and earning his Master’s degree in 1994, Jurgen busied himself either starting up or leading a variety of Dutch businesses, always in the position of team leader, manager, or executive.

 

Jurgen’s most recent occupation was CIO at ISM eCompany, one of the largest e-business solution providers in The Netherlands. As a manager, Jurgen has experience in leading software developers, development managers, project managers, quality managers, service managers, and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally.

 

He is primarily interested in software development and complexity theory, from a manager’s perspective. As a writer, he has published papers and articles in many magazines, and he maintains a blog at www.noop.nl. As a speaker, he is regularly invited to talk at seminars and conferences.

 

Last but not least, Jurgen is a trainer, with workshops based on the Management 3.0 model. His materials address the topics of energizing people, empowering teams, aligning constraints, developing competence, growing structure, and improving everything.

 

However, sometimes he puts all writing, speaking, and training aside to do some programming himself, or to spend time on his ever-growing collection of science fiction and fantasy literature, which he stacks in a self-designed book case that is four meters high.

 

Jurgen lives in Rotterdam (The Netherlands)–and sometimes in Brussels (Belgium)–with his partner Raoul. He has two kids and an imaginary hamster called George.

 

Table of Contents

• 1  Why Things Are Not That Simple   
• 2  Agile Software Development    
• 3  Complex Systems Theory   
• 4  The Information-Innovation System   
• 5  How to Energize People   
• 6  The Basics of Self-Organization   
• 7  How to Empower Teams   
• 8  Leading and Ruling on Purpose    
• 9  How to Align Constraints    
• 10  The Craft of Rulemaking   
• 11  How to Develop Competence   
• 12  Communication on Structure    
• 13  How to Grow Structure    
• 14  The Landscape of Change   
• 15  How to Improve Everything   
• 16  All Is Wrong, but Some Is Useful   
• Index 

Editorial Reviews

I don’t care for cookbooks, as in ‘5 steps to success at whatever.’ I like books that urge you to think–that present new ideas and get mental juices flowing. Jurgen’s book is in this latter category; it asks us to think about leading and managing as a complex undertaking–especially in today’s turbulent world. Management 3.0 offers managers involved in agile/lean transformations a thought-provoking guide how they themselves can ‘become’ agile.”

– Jim Highsmith, Executive Consultant, ThoughtWorks, Inc., www.jimhighsmith.com, Author of Agile Project Management

“ An up-to-the-minute, relevant round-up of research and practice on complexity and management, cogently summarized and engagingly presented.”

–David Harvey, Independent Consultant, Teams and Technology

“ Management 3.0 is an excellent book introducing agile to management. I’ve not seen any book that comes near to what this book offers for managers of agile teams. It’s not only a must read, it’s a must share.”

–Olav Maassen, Xebia

“ If you want hard fast rules like ‘if x happens, do y to fix it’ forget this book. Actually forget about a management career. But if you want tons of ideas on how to make the work of your team more productive and thereby more fun and thereby more productive and thereby more fun and…read this book! You will get a head start on this vicious circle along with a strong reasoning on why the concepts work.”

–Jens Schauder, Software Developer, LINEAS

“ There are a number of books on managing Agile projects and transitioning from being a Project Manager to working in an Agile setting. However, there isn’t much on being a manager in an Agile setting. This book fills that gap, but actually addresses being an effective manager in any situation. The breadth of research done and presented as background to the actual concrete advice adds a whole other element to the book. And all this while writing in an entertaining style as well.”

–Scott Duncan, Agile Coach/Trainer, Agile Software Qualities

“ Don’t get tricked by the word ‘Agile’ used in the subtitle. The book isn’t really about Agile; it is about healthy, sensible and down-to-earth management. Something, which is still pretty uncommon.”

–Pawel Brodzinski, Software Project Management

“ When I first met Jurgen and learned he was writing a book based on complexity theory, I thought, ‘That sounds good, but I’ll never understand it.’ Books with words like entropy, chaos theory, and thermodynamics tend to scare me. In fact, not only did I find Management 3.0 accessible and easy to understand, I can [also] apply the information immediately, in a practical way. It makes sense that software teams are complex adaptive systems, and a relief to learn how to apply these ideas to help our teams do the best work possible. This book will help you whether you’re a manager or a member of a software team”.

–Lisa Crispin, Agile Tester, ePlan Services, Inc., author of Agile Testing

“ This book is an important read for managers who want to move b

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