Chapter 20
Ten Key Resources for Agile Project Management
In This Chapter
Finding support for successful agile transitions
Getting involved with core agile communities
Accessing resources for popular agile approaches
Many organizations, websites, blogs, and companies exist to provide information about and support for agile project management. To help you get started, I’ve compiled a list of key resources you can use to support your journey to agile project management.
Agile Project Management For Dummies Online Cheat Sheet
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/agileprojectmanagement
You can use my online Cheat Sheet as a companion to this book as you start implementing the 12 Agile Principles and models outlined in previous chapters. You’ll find how-to guides, tools, templates and other helpful resources for your agile toolkit.
The Agile Alliance
The Agile Alliance is the original global agile community, with a mission to help advance the 12 Agile Principles and practices, regardless of methodology. The Agile Alliance site has an extensive resources section that includes articles, videos, presentations, and an index of independent agile community groups across the world.
The Scrum Alliance
The Scrum Alliance is a nonprofit professional membership organization that promotes understanding and usage of scrum. The alliance achieves this goal by promoting scrum training and certification classes, hosting international scrum gatherings, and supporting scrum user groups. The Scrum Alliance site is rich in blog entries, white papers, case studies, and other tools for learning and working with scrum.
The Project Management Institute Agile Community
The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the largest nonprofit project management membership association in the world. It has more than 500,000 members and a presence in more than 185 countries. PMI supports an agile community of practice and a certification, the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).
The PMI website provides information and requirements for certification along with access to papers, books, and seminars about agile project management. PMI members can also access PMI’s agile community website, with an extensive knowledge center including blog posts, forums, webinars, and information about local agile networking events.
Agile Leadership Network
http://agileleadershipnetwork.org
The Agile Leadership Network is a nonprofit community development organization that supports learning and networking for local agile leaders. The Agile Leadership Network supports project leadership through leadership summits focusing on the ideas and values outlined in its Declaration of Interdependence. The site has links to many events and resources, including to the Los Angeles Agile Project Leadership Network, which I founded and continue to chair.
Scrum Development Yahoo! Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment
Started in 2000, the Scrum Development Yahoo! Group continues to be one of the best scrum message boards on the Internet. It has thousands of members, including several signatories of the Agile Manifesto, and receives hundreds of posts monthly. The Scrum Development Yahoo! Group is one of my core sources for staying in tune with the global scrum community.
InfoQ
InfoQ is an independent online community with a prominent agile section offering news, articles, video interviews, video presentations, and minibooks, all written by domain experts in agile techniques. The resources at InfoQ tend to be very high quality, and the content is both unique and relevant to the issues facing agile project teams.
Lean Essays
Mary and Tom Poppendieck are thought leaders in the use of lean concepts within the software development space. Authors of several books about lean software development, the Poppendiecks maintain an active blog at www.lean essays.com that blends humor and empirical data into fun, informative articles that I’ve found to be useful when coaching struggling development teams.
What Is Extreme Programming?
http://xprogramming.com/what-is-extreme-programming
Ron Jeffries was one of the originators of the extreme programming (XP) development approach, along with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. Ron provides resources and services in support of XP’s advancement on the http://xprogramming.com site. The “What Is Extreme Programming?” section of the site summarizes the core concepts of XP. Other articles and extreme programming resources are also available on Ron’s website.
Platinum Edge
Since 2001, my team at Platinum Edge has been helping companies successfully take their project management practices to a higher level. Visit our blog to get the latest insights on practices, tools, and innovative solutions emerging from the dynamic agile community.
We also provide the following services:
Develop transition strategies and provide training and coaching for organizations moving to agile project management
Provide public and customized agile training for budding agile experts, including
• Certified ScrumMaster classes (CSM)
• Certified Scrum Product Owner classes (CSPO)
• PMI-ACP preparation classes