Mike Cohn has an exquisite style of writing that is very easy to read, and Mike can communicate some tough concepts in a very simple way.
This book is one I do recommend to all the Scrum master to read. Mike has shared lots of excellent ideas and advice in this book.
This book is 400 pages of compressive guide for Scrum Masters to lead an Agile team. This book is not for someone who is new to Scrum, and if you are new then you should look at my following post for more resource for new Scrum Masters
Book Structure:
This book is divided into four major sections, and these are:
Getting Started: This section discusses adopting Scrum.
Individuals: In this section, Mike explains the new role in Scrum and what these are over four chapters. It also explains how the traditional role fit into Scrum.
Teams: This is the biggest section of the book and probably my favourite part of the book. This is the section that I recommend everyone to read. This section covers the area that most Agile and Scrum teams struggle with. Topics like Team Structure, Teamwork, Leading a Self-organizing team and quality are covered in this section of the book.
The Organization: The fourth section covers topics like Scaling Scrum, Distributed Team and coexisting with other approaches.
Positive:
In this book, Mike cover all the things that any Scrum team need to Succeed. He also discusses his experience in detail and best of all its very easy to read and completely non-technical. Also at the end of each chapter, Mike as included an Additional Reading list.
Negative:
Everything that is covered in this book is available on Mike Cohn’s blog for free, and some of the chapters in the book are copies of Mikes blog post. So in a sense, you could get most his book plus extra for free from his blog then why the book buy?
Summary:
If you are completely new to Scrum, then this book is not for you but if you are an experienced Scrum Master and you have not yet read this book, then you should feel ashamed of yourself. This book is what it says on the cover, “Succeeding with Agile: Software development using Scrum”, it will help you succeed with Agile and Scrum adoption. The Section 3 of the book is Must for everyone who is using any form of Agile.