Teams employing Scrum deliver a remarkable 250% improvement in quality.
If you’re looking to make your team productive, deliver projects faster, and scale your business, Scrum is one of the best frameworks to use.
There are many ways you can learn Scrum, but for us we found a number of books which were extremely helpful and effective in getting the idea across properly.
We thought it would be helpful for anyone else interested in what Scrum has to offer, or integrating it into their business workflow, for us to share some of our favorite books on learning Scrum. Our recommendations only include books that:
- Are written by proven experts
- Offer actionable advice
- Are easy to follow, understand, and put into practice
Our book recommendations are suitable for everyone – whether you’re joining a team that operates with Scrum, or have been working with Scrum for years.
Let’s get started!
#1: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
- The book’s author: Jeff Sutherland
- The number of pages: 258 pages
- The date: 2014
This book is, in our opinion, the best Scrum book on our list – and the one that everyone should read.
It’s from Jeff Sutherland, who is one of the pioneers of the Scrum framework – he helped actually invent it. What’s great about this book is that it’s written in a very easy-to-understand way – without any technical language or jargon. To make implementing the principles from the book as easy as possible, the author uses real-life stories, which really helps it make sense.
These stories are very relatable, and you can often find yourself in these exact situations.
The author also focuses on how most leaders are setting themselves up for failure – without them even knowing about it. Fortunately, you can use these stories and cases to avoid making these same mistakes. and get ahead faster.
What we found great about Jeff’s philosophy is that he focuses on the team’s happiness.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to happiness, how it affects you and your team, how to quantify it, and ways to make a positive impact on a team’s emotional well-being.
This Scrum book will allow you to understand:
- What is wrong with the way we currently work
- How to solve most of today’s productivity problems
- How to accelerate quality and productivity by 1,200%
#2: Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process
- The book’s author: Kenneth Rubin
- The number of pages: 496 pages
- The date of release: 2012
Essential Scrum is the go-to book for developing innovative products and services that delight customers.
This book dives deep into the values, principles, and practices of Scrum from one of the world’s leading Scrum coaches and trainers – Kenny Rubin. Whether you are new to Scrum, or you’ve been using it for years, this book will introduce, clarify, and deepen your Scrum knowledge.
Each chapter is very thorough, which makes the book a serious time investment. But it’s definitely worth it for the value you get.
Unlike most books, Essential Scrum features easy-to-digest content with 200+ illustrations based on an entirely new visual language for describing Scrum’s roles, artifacts, and activities. For experienced Scrum veterans, this book will complement your day-to-day issues better than any other book on today’s list.
After reading Essential Scrum, you’ll be equipped with:
- Principles for managing every team member
- A vocabulary you can use with other Scrum masters
- Practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from Scrum
#3: Agile Scrum Crash Course: A Guide To Agile Project Management and Scrum Master Certification PSM 1
- The book’s author: Umer W.
- The number of pages: 151 pages
- The date of release: 2020
This book is the best resource for preparing you for the Scrum certification.
It’s a quick and complete guide on all you need for learning the essentials of Scrum and Agile project management. The book is written in a way to help prepare you for the Professional Scrum Master Certification, PSM 1 – helping you to pass it on the first attempt.
Agile Scrum Crash Course is aimed at beginners, featuring plenty of easy-to-understand examples, real-life stories, and simple language. No matter what your industry background is, you’ll be able to quickly learn the fundamentals and start using these frameworks.
Here are some of the lessons this book will teach you:
- Complete overview of Agile project management and Scrum
- The Difference between Waterfall and Agile Project Management
- What is a Sprint – A Step-by-Step Walkthrough
- Scrum Roles – Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team
- Scrum Events – Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Retrospective, Sprint Review
- Scrum Artifacts – Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment
#4: The Epic Guide to Agile: More Business Value on a Predictable Schedule with Scrum
- The book’s author: Dave Todaro
- The number of pages: 518 pages
- The date of release: 2019
Agile is amazing, yet most professionals can’t produce reliable, long-term results with it.
Most executives and team leaders get very excited about the Agile framework. They can’t wait to try it with their team or organization. Unfortunately, a majority of these professionals fall short of the expectations – and achieve poor results with it.
Fortunately, The Epic Guide to Agile has the missing pieces you need to overcome this. This book offers the answers to the team-level challenges that hold you and many other companies back.
We found The Epic Guide to Agile to be extremely practical and actionable.
It provides you with examples and anecdotes to tackle problems at their source, a step-by-step system to achieve productive sprint planning, and proven solutions to the issues that can doom your team.
By reading this book, you’ll learn:
- Effective ways to introduce Agile and Scrum into your organization
- Tricks to get your product smoothly into production
- Have success with the Agile framework
Even though Scrum and Agile are closely related, this book mostly focuses on Agile – although there is a lot of information about Scrum too.
#5: The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage
- The book’s author: Don McGreal & Ralph Jocham
- The number of pages: 384 pages
- The date of release: 2018
A must-read product owner’s guide to maximizing value with Scrum
McGreal and Jocham, two leading experts in successful Scrum product ownership, discuss taking accountability, and refocusing on value as the primary objective of all you do. They go into much detail about strategy and connecting Vision, Value, and Validation.
You’ll quickly learn how to identify where value can be found, how to measure it, and maximize it throughout the entire product lifecycle.
Plus, you’ll discover:
- How to scale your product, not your Scrum
- Use customer-driven measurements to maximize value
- Plan and manage releases, improve transparency, and reduce technical debt
- Use Scrum to inject autonomy, mastery, and purpose into your product team’s work
The Professional Product Owner lays out how to continuously deliver value, Scrum best-practices for managing complexity, and concrete practices to manage product backlogs and release plans.
Throughout the book, the authors share revealing personal experiences that illuminate obstacles to success, and show how they can be successfully overcome.
Conclusion – What’s Your Favorite Scrum Book?
Scrum books can be an excellent way to learn more about Scrum and Agile project management frameworks and achieve optimal productivity.
To learn more about how to manage your team better, check some of these additional resources we think you’ll find useful:
- The 6 Stages of Project Management: How to Manage Projects Like a PRO
- The Best Project Management Software to Run Your Web Design Agency
- Critical Chain Project Management – Agile’s Missing Link
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