Top 100 Agile Books

I thought it was time for a new book list, and it seemed only obvious to publish this list of 100 best books for agile software development while I attended the big Agile2010 conference in Orlando.

I created this list in the following way:

• I took pictures of all the books being sold at the conference;
• For the many agile books among them, I used the “people-who-bought-this-book-also-bought-these-other-books” feature on Amazon, in order to find even more agile books;
• For all the books I found (more than 100) I looked up the ratings from both Amazon and GoodReads, and the dates they were first published;
• I created an intricate formula representing the levels of popularity (number of ratings), quality (average ratings) and nudity (just kidding);
• And I weakly penalized books for their age, to make sure that the oldies didn’t take up all the top positions, simply because they’ve been around longer.

I’m sure my method is flawed, and could be significantly improved. If I only had extra time, instead of a normal life. So if you think you can do better, I will look forward to your improved version. ;-)

Enjoy the list…

NR	Title	Author(s)	Year
1	Agile Estimating and Planning	Mike Cohn	2005
2	Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship	Robert C. Martin	2008
3	Working Effectively with Legacy Code	Michael Feathers	2004
4	Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code	Martin Fowler, et al.	1999
5	The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .Net	Roy Osherove	2009
6	Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices	Robert C. Martin	2002
7	The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master	Andrew Hunt, David Thomas	1999
8	Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business	David J. Anderson	2010
9	Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum	Mike Cohn	2009
10	Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests	Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce	2009
11	User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development	Mike Cohn	2004
12	Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit	Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck	2003
13	Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software	Eric Evans	2003
14	The Art of Agile Development	James Shore, Shane Warden	2007
15	Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management	Scott Berkun	2008
16	Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#	Robert C. Martin, Micah Martin	2006
17	Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams	Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory	2009
18	Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World	Venkat Subramaniam, Andy Hunt	2005
19	Behind Closed Doors	Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby	2005
20	Applied Software Project Management	Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene	2005
21	Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (1st+2nd Edition)	Jim Highsmith	2009
22	xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code	Gerard Meszaros	2007
23	Scrum and XP from the Trenches	Henrik Kniberg	2007
24	Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash	Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck	2006
25	Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide	Craig Larman	2003
26	Writing Effective Use Cases	Alistair Cockburn	2000
27	Refactoring to Patterns	Joshua Kerievsky	2004
28	Agile Coaching	Rachel Davies, Liz Sedley	2009
29	Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great	Esther Derby, Diana Larsen	2006
30	Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Succes	Amr Elssamadisy	2008
31	Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects	Johanna Rothman	2009
32	The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development	Donald G. Reinertsen	2009
33	Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises	Dean Leffingwell	2007
34	Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams	Alistair Cockburn	2004
35	Requirements by Collaboration	Ellen Gottesdiener	2002
36	Agile Software Development with Scrum	Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle	2001
37	The Productive Programmer	Neal Ford	2008
38	Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development	James O. Coplien, Neil B. Harrison	2004
39	Agile Project Management with Scrum	Ken Schwaber	2004
40	Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (1st+2nd Edition)	Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres	1999
41	Managing the Design Factory	Donald G. Reinertsen	1997
42	Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management	Johanna Rothman	2007
43	Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are not the Point	Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck	2009
44	Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum	Craig Larman, Bas Vodde	2009
45	Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum	Craig Larman, Bas Vodde	2008
46	Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (1st+2nd Edition)	Alistair Cockburn	2001
47	Test Driven Development: By Example	Kent Beck	2002
48	Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk	Paul M. Duvall, Steve Matyas, Andrew Glover	2007
49	Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders	Jean Tabaka	2006
50	Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile	Allan Kelly	2008
51	Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects	Jared Richardson, William A. Gwaltney	2005
52	Agility and Discipline Made Easy: Practices from OpenUP and RUP	Per Kroll, Bruce MacIsaac	2006
53	Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design	Scott W. Ambler, Pramodkumar J. Sadalage	2006
54	Managing Agile Projects	Kevin J. Aguanno	2005
55	Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions	Luke Hohmann	2003
56	Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders	Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene	2009
57	Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How They Improve Software	Adam Goucher, Tim Riley	2009
58	Managing Agile Projects	Sanjiv Augustine	2005
59	Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility	Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott	2009
60	Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love	Roman Pichler	2010
61	Implementation Patterns	Kent Beck	2006
62	Extreme Programming Installed	Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, Chet Hendrickson	2000
63	Agile Excellence for Product Managers: A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams	Greg Cohen	2010
64	Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed	Barry Boehm, Richard Turner	2003
65	Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme	Robert K. Wysocki	2003
66	Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development	Scott L. Bain	2008
67	Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas	Mary Lynn Manns, Linda Rising	2004
68	Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility	Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little, Kent McDonald	2009
69	A Tale of Two Systems: Lean and Agile Software Development for Business Leaders	Michael K. Levine	2009
70	Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing	Alan Mark Davis	2005
71	Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition	Lyssa Adkins	2010
72	Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers	Louis Testa	2009
73	Becoming Agile: ...in an Imperfect World	Greg Smith, Ahmed Sidky	2008
74	Agile Game Development with Scrum	Clinton Keith	2010
75	Test Driven: TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers	Lasse Koskela	2007
76	The Business Value of Agile Software Methods: Maximizing Roi With Just-in-time Processes and Documentation	David F. Rico, Hasan H. Sayani, Saya Sone	2009
77	A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum	Elizabeth Woodward, Steffan Surdek, Matthew Ganis	2010
78	Principles of Software Development Leadership: Applying Project Management Principles to Agile Software Development	Ken Whitaker	2009
79	Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption	Amr Elssamadisy	2007
80	Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play	Luke Hohmann	2006
81	Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results	David J. Anderson	2003
82	Project Management the Agile Way: Making It Work in the Enterprise	John C. Goodpasture	2009
83	The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility	Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick	2008
84	Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World	Michael H. Hugos	2009
85	The Enterprise Unified Process: Extending the Rational Unified Process	Scott W. Ambler, John Nalbone, Michael J. Vizdos	2005
86	Kanban and Scrum - Making the Most of Both	Henrik Kniberg, Mattias Skarin	2010
87	Agile Software Development: Best Practices for Large Software Development Projects	Thomas Stober, Uwe Hansmann	2009
88	Bridging the Communication Gap: Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing	Gojko Adzic	2009
89	Software Endgames: Eliminating Defects, Controlling Change, And The Countdown To On-time Delivery	Robert Galen	2004
90	Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for eXtreme Programming and the Unified Process	Scott Ambler	2002
91	Agile Software Development Ecosystems	Jim Highsmith	2002
92	Software by Numbers: Low-Risk, High-Return Development	Mark Denne, Jane Cleland-Huang	2003
93	Scrumban - Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development	Corey Ladas	2008
94	The Enterprise and Scrum	Ken Schwaber	2007
95	Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide	David Astels	2003
96	Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: Balancing Sustainability and Speed	Mario E. Moreira	2009
97	Testing Extreme Programming	Lisa Crispin, Tip House	2002
98	Patterns for Effective Use Cases	Steve Adolph, Paul Bramble	2002
99	Real-Time Agility: The Harmony/ESW Method for Real-Time and Embedded Systems Development	Bruce Powel Douglass	2009
100	Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems	Jim Highsmith	1999

p.s. Check the right side of this blog if you're interested in the many other lists I've made.

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