30 books for Scrum Masters

Hi everyone! In this article, I'd like to share my list of top 30 books for Scrum Masters.

I've read all of these books and used them in my practice. They actually work! :) The books cover all eight areas of the  Scrum Master competency model developed by the  Agile Coaching Institute:

 

 

Agile-Lean Practitioner

This is the first and foremost area of Scrum Master's skills. A Scrum Master is a practitioner living by the Agile and Scrum values (Openness, Commitment, Courage, Respect, Focus) not in word but in deed. A seasoned Scrum Master has brought up at least several teams and has years of experience under his belt. Here's a list of books that will help you dive into this area.

• Practices For Scaling Lean & Agile Development

• Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners

• Scrum Mastery

• Scrum Field Guide

• Scaling Lean & Agile Development

• The Great ScrumMaster

 

Teaching & Mentoring

A Scrum Master is an expert, and therefore a teacher/mentor when it comes to understanding real (classic) Scrum. If you wake up a good Scrum Master in the middle of the night, he will instantly list the 11 elements of Scrum and tell you how Scrum values are connected to empirical process :) Here's a list of books on this area.

• Scrum Guide

• Scrum: A Pocket Guide: A Smart Travel Companion

• Software in 30 Days

 

Coaching

A Scrum Master has the skills of a professional coach. He has studied at various coaching federations, knows how to ask insightful open-ended questions, and firmly holds the coaching stance. These three books will help you develop these skills.

• Coaching Agile Teams

• Co-Active Coaching (must read for any coach)

• Coaching Questions (a practical book with lots of ready questions)

 

Facilitating

You cannot overestimate the importance of facilitating for Scrum Masters, because a Scrum Master is in charge of ensuring the efficiency of the process and facilitating the Development Team decisions. I recommend that Scrum Masters who are just starting out acquire this skill first. Use these books:

• Agile Retrospectives

• Gamestorming

• The Secrets of Facilitation

• Facilitator’s Guide To Participatory Decision Making

 

Technical Mastery

Here are books for a Scrum Master who aims for technical mastery and wants to coach teams on engineering practices:

• Clean Code

• Agile Testing

• Specification by Example

• ATDD by Example

 

Business Mastery

Coaching and training Product Owners are important tasks for a Scrum Master. This causes many questions: Which product techniques do I use for Product Backlog? How can I help optimize the business value? How do we define product development strategy? The answers can be found here:

• Strategize

• User Story Mapping

• The Lean Product Leanbook

• Value Proposition Design

• Business Model Generation

• Impact Mapping

 

Transformational Mastery

If a Scrum Master wants to transform organizations and their culture and, what's most important, is brave enough for this, he becomes an agent of organizational change. You'll find useful tools in these books:

• Agile IT Organization Design

• Fifth Discipline

• Large-Scaled Scrum (LeSS)

• Lean Enterprise

 

That's it! I hope you'll find this list useful. I would love to see more real Scrum Masters: practitioners, teachers/mentors, coaches, drivers of engineering and business/product practices, and agents of change!

 

About the Author

My name is Ilia Pavlichenko, I am an Agile Coach at Unusual-Concepts. Furthermore, I am a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) at Scrum.org and a founder of the Scrum Day Russia conference, Scrum Russia user group and meetups Inspired By Agile, Large-Scaled Scrum (LeSS) Russia. I don't spend a single minute working, because I do what I love. Scrum is my hobby and my life. Want to learn how to become an effective Scrum Master or Product Owner? Join me at Professional Scrum Master (PSM) and Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) trainings.

 

Scrum ON!