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Scrum Master Books

Last post 01:24 pm February 4, 2016 by Nafar Yane
2 replies
Tajinder Dogra
04:50 am January 25, 2016

Hi,

I am a C# .NET Developer for 8 years.

I have been a member of the Scrum team (as a developer). I find Scrum Master's role very interesting, and would like to pursue my career as a Scrum Master.

I am not keen at doing the certification straight away. Firstly, I would like to know more about it, all its roles and responsibilities, its day to day work, challenges, processes and procedures.

More importantly, I would like to start with reading some good books about Scrum Master or being a Scrum Master or becoming a Scrum Master.

Could you please help me out with some good initial books that I could read and expand my knowledge?

Taj

Jade Stephen
09:13 am February 4, 2016

Hi Tajinder,

I would suggest a few books, but not all of them are specific to being a Scrum master. A large part of our role as a SM is facilitation, coaching, teaching, mentoring, and knowing scrum and agile in general. Here are my suggestions:


1) Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen - This is a short but straight to the point and in depth look at Scrum.

2) Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant Leadership by Geoff Watts - A great book about being a Scrum Master, Best Practices, and more.

3) Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition By Lyssa Adkins - This is a great book about being a coach to an agile team, and being a servant leader to them.

4) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Dan Pink - This is a must read for SMs as it is about motivation in a modern age, and how to help keep people motivated without providing external controls or financial motivators in place.

There may be better suggestions out there, but this is where I found the most value so far!

Nafar Yane
01:24 pm February 4, 2016

This is something that I get often as a coach from my team. I had plenty of experience in lean earlier. But my scrum journey started only a short while back. I started my scrum knowledge primarily through books. Here are top books that I liked:

Here is my TOP 10 readings on the order of Value for Money / Easy articulation for understanding / Authenticity.

1. The Scrum Guide - A rich and excellent 16 page document by Scrum Authors freely downloadable (There is another book claiming to be Knowledge Body on Scrum. That needs to be avoided)

2. Scrum and XP from the trenches - superb collection of theory and practice articulated by Heinz.

3. Power of Scrum - by original Scrum Master Jeff

4. Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide - by mohammed. An add-on to Scrum Guide but more engaging to read. This helps with PSM exam too

5. Elements of Scrum - A real world narration of Scrum experience by chris sims

6. Software in 30 days - by original scrum master ken

7. Scrum - A Pocket Guide - by Gunther. A cool book and nice companion during any trip. Lightweight on language but solid in content

8. Agile estimating and planning - Not so much about scrum, but will help a lot on many questions that you will have if you are doing traditional software development

9. Agile Product Management - By Roman. If you can get around generalizations and vague content at few places, this book will provide more insights on Product Owner side of the world

10. Agile Project Management with Scrum - by original scrum master ken. I would have added Agile SW Dev with Scrum by Ken and Mike here, but the former has more clarity of the subject.

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