I’ve curated this list of books which should be on every Scrum Master’s bookshelf, be it physical or digital. From building teams to building story maps, this is information you should master on your journey to guiding teams to higher levels of agility.
Scrum Mastery
Hands down one of the best books for Scrum Masters, or anyone who wants to understand what great teams look and act like when leveraging Scrum.
Geoff describes not only what a good Scrum Master will do to help teams but he takes it one step further. He talks about what great Scrum Masters will do to enable teams.
This is the secret sauce to moving away from facilitating and herding cats to teaching teams to own their ways of working. To become accountable for their own results.
Even if you’re a seasoned pro you will find useful perspectives and tips for assisting your teams and helping your organization to grow.
One example: “A good Scrum Master encourages teams to share skills. A great Scrum Master encourages teams to share responsibilities.“
Or as I have been saying for many years now: “We succeed or fail as one”.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Two things set this book apart from others of its kind.
First, the book unfolds in storytelling format rather than another textbook. This format really helps the reader to understand the examples because the story is highly relatable.
Second, the advice is top notch leadership guidance. You will learn about, and how to overcome:
- Lack of Trust
- Fear of Conflict
- Lack of Commitment
- Avoidance of Accountability
- Inattention to Results
If you’ve ever worked as part of a team you will almost certainly have encountered these situations. After reading this book you will have a toolbox of practices to resolve them.
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
One of the first books I read about Agile teams and still one of the best.
For anyone, or any team, who desires to increase their effectiveness, it’s incredibly important to frequently review current ways of working and adapt as necessary.
Ester and Diane describe their 5 Step method of holding retrospectives to focus the conversation and generate useable change experiments.
These days there are dozens and dozens of retrospective templates and the vast majority implement this strategy of: Setting the Stage, Gathering Data, Generating Insights, Deciding What to Do and then Closing.
Learn from this classic how to leverage the 5 step method to improve the effectiveness of your team/group retrospectives.
Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching
I’ve heard some objections over the title but don’t let that stop you from checking out this fantastic read. The Agile Moose (Bob) has been helping teams and individuals for quite some time now and this book shares incredibly powerful information.
The Agile Coaching Growth Wheel is a fantastic tool for people looking to up their game. Useful for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and anyone looking to improve their coaching skills. It extends far beyond the more traditional X-Wing model made popular by Lyssa Adkins (see: Coaching Agile Teams)
Follow through the example conversations which illustrate situational switching of stances during a Coaching Arc (conversation). These examples really helped me understand when to pivot in certain situations.
You won’t find a more humble Agile sensei than Bob. And you won’t be disappointed after reading this book.
User Story Mapping
While not a traditional Scrum Master book recommendation, I believe Scrum Masters should be teaching others in the team better practices. Story Mapping is one such practice.
Author Jeff Patton includes a fantastic description of what user stories are meant to be and how they should be used. The concept of “vacation photos” and the backstory was an eye opener for me. This technique helped me explain stories to teams and that they shouldn’t rely solely on the written words. Conversations to reach a shared understanding are more important.
Story mapping elevates your backlog from a 1-n list into a 2-dimensional view that is far easier to understand. Reduce risk by defining and building the “walking skeleton”. This gives your stakeholders a wholistic idea of the product being developed before “going deep” on any specific feature or functionality.
As your story map evolves you will be able to “tell the story” of your product, find holes, decide which is more important to create sooner and what can wait until later.
You won’t be disappointed in this book!
When Will It Be Done?
Forget about estimates, story points and velocity, learn about Lean metrics and how they can increase team predictability. In this book you will learn how to leverage Cycle Time and Throughput to generate probabilistic forecasts.
Discover the assumptions behind Little’s Law.
Dial in the certainty factor you desire and forecast when single items and multiple items are likely to complete. A lot of fantastic information on the creation of forecasts and perhaps even more important “what not to do” sections. For example, the “Flaw of Averages” can bite you and the most likely outcome for your team is actually not very likely.
Use the forecasts to engage management and stakeholders in active conversations. Reduce risk by exploring process improvement efforts to increase the probability of forecasts being accurate.
Wrapping Up
There are many additional books that a Scrum Master should read over time to enhance their knowledge and understanding. The Agile world is continually evolving as our environments also change. Continuous Learning should be part of your mindset as an Agilist.
I don’t expect this article to be static. I plan to add more recommendations in the future.
If you liked this post and want to learn more about Agile, Lean or Leadership, please consider purchasing one of the books on this page.
Until next time!
