How ironic.
My own little book is the first one that did not make it onto the Top 100 Agile Books, which I published last week. If I had not made that last-minute decision to allow that other author’s book onto the list… *groan*
Oh well, it simply means I made it to the #1 slot of the list of new Agile books that didn’t make it onto the Top 100, this time.
Maybe next year…
It took me four hours, three coffees, two toilet breaks, and one unpredictable wi-fi connection, but here it is… the annual Top 100 Agile Books 2012, based on ratings from Amazon and GoodReads.
There are some amazing changes at the top of the list this year. Most notable is the new entry at #1 of The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. Clearly deserved, as the whole Agile community has been talking about it all year.
But that’s not all.
Specification by Example, by Gojko Adzic, makes a spectacular jump to the 2nd slot in the list. The Scrum Field Guide, by Mitch Lacey, has skyrocketed into the list at #7. And The Culture Game, by Dan Mezick, also makes a remarkable new entry at #39.
As for the rest, I suggest you see for yourself…
(For last year’s list see: Top 100 Agile Books, Edition 2011)
TY = position this year
LY = position last year
*) UPDATE 24-8-2012: Added to the list one week after original publication
This list is based on quality (averate ratings) and quantity (number of ratings), both on Amazon.com and GoodReads.com. The age of the books also played a minor factor in the calculations. (Older books should keep acquiring new ratings, or else they drop in the list.)
Basically, I created four different rankings: (1) average Amazon rating, (2) number of Amazon ratings, (3) average GoodReads rating, (4) number of GoodReads ratings, (5) age of book in days since release. Then I calculated the average score of the books across these rankings (where age had only half the weight compared to the others), and then I turned this into the final ranking. The result is a list that reflects books with the most and the best ratings, weighed according to the time span in which they were able to earn those ratings.
Next week I will show you the new books that didn’t make it…
Next week is the Agile 2012 conference in Dallas, and I hope to have time to create a new edition of the Agile Books Top 100 during that week. I have been making notes of new book releases since the last edition, and next week we will see if some of these make it onto the new list!
(If you know some new releases missing from this list, please let me know!)
These are the newest Agile books...
Agile ALM: Lightweight Tools and Agile Strategies – Michael Hüttermann
The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year – Mitch Lacey
An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide – Michael Sahota
Software in 30 Days – Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland
How to Change the World: Change Management 3.0 – Jurgen Appelo
Essential Scrum – Kenny Rubin
The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager – Daniel Mezick
Lessons in Agile Management: On the Road to Kanban – David J. Anderson
There's Always a Duck – Elizabeth Hendrickson
The Dream Team Nightmare – Portia Tung
Who Is Agile? – Yves Hanoulle
Combat Agile: Applying Military Concepts… – Steven T. Johnson
* UPDATE *
ATDD by Example: A Practical Guide to ATDD - Markus Gaertner
Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects... - Henrik Kniberg
Did I forget any?
p.s. I know several authors (such as Laurent Bossavit, Patrick Kua, and Ellen Gottesdiener) have new books available, but none of these are (at the time of writing this post) listed on Amazon or GoodReads. However, the availability of Amazon and/or GoodReads reviews and ratings are a requirement to be qualified for the annual Books Top 100.
(photo: Raoul Luoar)
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’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…
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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I thought it was time for a new top list on this blog.
The readers of this blog know that I did this several times before, with the Top 200 Blogs for Developers, the Social Media Blogs Top 200, the Top 100 Best Books for Managers, Leaders & Humans, and many more…
This time I wanted a list of the best management and leadership blogs in the world. And after a few weeks of browsing I had collected more than 150 blogs fitting the category.
For each of these blogs I retrieved their Google Page Rank, Bing hit count, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Authority, Twitter Grader, PostRank and FeedBurner count. (Note: not all statistics were available for each blog, in which cases they simply scored ‘neutral’. For an elaborate description of my algorithms, see: How to Make a Top Blog List.)
Anyways, here is the complete list of 150 management and leadership blogs. I was happy to see that my own blog didn't perform too badly. :-) But I’m sure I missed some (more) important blogs. Feel free to let me know and add them in the comments section!
Addendum: you can follow all these great people through this Twitter list: http://twitter.com/jurgenappelo/management
Addendum 2: an OPML file with all the RSS feeds of these blogs is available here.
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From today NOOP.NL can claim to be the #1 software development-related blog in Europe.
Well, that’s nice.
And some other people are also doing well on this new edition of the Top 200 Blogs for Developers. Jeff Atwood has replaced Scott Hanselman, meaning that he now has the #1 Development Blog in the world! And look at Scott Berkun, shooting up to the #3 spot. How does he do that? He’s not even a developer! Plus, we have no less than 21 new entries on the list. I’m sure there’s something for everyone here.
Like before, I created this list using Google PageRank, Technorati Authority, Alexa Rank, Google links, Twitter Grader Rank, AideRSS PostRank and the Mongolian Stock Exchange. (For more information see: How to Make a Top Blog List.) And like before, I hope you will tweet, digg, bookmark, and comment the hell out of this article! It was, as usual, a tremendous amount of work.
I have updated a significant number of Twitter names in this list, and I’m confident that this is now the best list of software development twitterers in the world. Use it to connect with all soft dev gurus and celebrities. And don’t forget to follow me as well: @jurgenappelo. I try no to be boring. Usually.
If you want to import all feeds in your reader, grab the OPML file here.
(Note: The list does not contain blogs where the authors exclusively write about specific tools or technologies, like .NET, or Java. Every blog should have at least _some_ content that is of interest to every developer regardless of technical background.)
Legend
TT = This Time
LT = Last Time
Note: for some of the statistics I happily used the script that was kindly supplied by Steven Machtelinckx. This saved me a lot of time... Thanks Steven!
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Recently I noticed that I had missed an important announcement that had been posted to one or two groups on various social networks. Not being someone who likes to be out of the loop, I checked the major networks to find the most important groups about Agile, Scrum and XP.
This is what I found:
(Note: this is not a complete list of all agile groups. I only list a selection of groups per network here. If you think I forgot an important one, feel free to add them in the comments section.)
Yahoo
| Group | Members | |
| Extreme Programming | 9319 | |
| The biggest of all agile groups. All the famous people are here: Ron Jeffries, Kent Beck, Scott Ambler. And since yesterday: me. | ||
| Scrum Development | 6965 | |
| Almost as big as its sister group (XP), with some famous bloggers: Cory Foy, George Dinwiddie, etc. | ||
| Agile Testing | 5583 | |
| Specifically about testing, and less active than the previous two. | ||
| Agile Project Management | 3765 | |
| Specifically about project management, but not a very active group. | ||
| Agile Usability | 1852 | |
| A bit more active than the previous one, and some interesting people here: Jeff Patton, Jared Spool, etc. | ||
| Agile Modeling | 1709 | |
| Scott Amblers favorite topic. Not mine. I suck at modeling. Except when there's a camera around. | ||
| Lean Agile | 1449 | |
| The marriage of lean and agile, moderated by Alan Shalloway, so it must be an interesting group. | ||
| Agile Management | 1013 | |
| About management, and quite an active group, originally initiated by David J. Anderson. | ||
| Group | Members | |
| All About Agile | 549 | |
| The only agile group at Google of reasonable size, though still not very big. | ||
| Group | Members | |
| Agile Alliance | 7911 | |
| This is the real one: the Agile Alliance itself. Also by far the biggest agile group on LinkedIn. | ||
| Agile | 4319 | |
| A generic group for both software development and project management. And quite an active group too. | ||
| Agile Project Management Group | 3653 | |
| A networking group for project managers with a professional and agile mindset. | ||
| Agile CMMI | 3187 | |
| About sharing knowledge between agile methods and CMMI. Hillel Glazer is leading this one, not surprisingly. | ||
| Agilistas | 2302 | |
| A group for agile evangelizers, the biggest one being Chris Spagnuolo, who is leading the group. | ||
| Agile Project Managers | 1924 | |
| Another networking group for agile project managers. | ||
| Agile Project Management | 1250 | |
| And yet another group for project managers. They really like making new groups these guys... | ||
| Agile Thinkers | 397 | |
| They say this group is for "agilitists", which sounds as if agile thinking is a bad disease for agilists. | ||
| Group | Members | |
| Scrum | 806 | |
| Contrary to Yahoo, on Facebook the Scrum group is the biggest one. | ||
| Extreme Programming | 349 | |
| Though the size of the XP group is not that bad either. | ||
Ning
| Group | Members | |
| Agile Thinkers | 177 | |
| This is the supporting network for those thinkers on LinkedIn suffering from agilitis. | ||
| XP and Agile | 39 | |
| The "ultimate knowledge center on XP and Agile", which is a great achievement with only 39 people. | ||
Note that there's one network seriously missing from this list: Windows Live Groups, which is because I have not been able to figure out how I'm supposed to search for group names on Windows Live. And besides, if there are any agile people using Windows Live Groups, they're probably 3-year olds, or brain dead.
(image by Hamed Saber)
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In response to my previous articles about the Top 200 Blogs for Developers and the Top 200 Social Media Blogs, I received a number of requests to supply OPML files.
This is understandable. It's a lot of tedious work to click on each and every hyperlink in my top 200 list, searching for the feeds on the blogs, and adding them to your feed reader. It's a lot easier to ask me to do all that.
So, OK. Here they are...
Top 200 Blogs for Developers (OPML file)
Top 200 Social Media Blogs (OPML file)
Enjoy reading! :-)
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Note: a new edition of this list is available here!
This is a sad day...
My blog is no longer the most popular software-development related blog of continental Europe. That other Dutch blogger (at #18) has managed to overtake me (at #24) in my own list. The nerve! The horror! I suspect his rise to fame was accellerated when he interviewed me some months ago. Bugger. I will let this sink in for a while. (And if you want to interview me, go away!)
In the meantime... please enjoy the 4th edition of the Top 200 Blogs for Developers.
Yes, two hundred blogs this time! Not one hundred. Two hundred! I'm in a generous mood. And that's not the only change. The other important change is that I replaced one of the metrics in my calculations. I am no longer counting the number of comments on each blog in this list. It just wasn't scalable. It made my fingers go numb. And my eyes bleed. And I had to drink way too much coffee. It was an unhealthy metric, if you ask me. Fortunately, a better and easier solution presented itself: I am now including PostRank (from AideRSS) in my calculations. "PostRank is based on social engagement, which refers to how interesting or relevant people have found [a blog post] to be." (see here) The PostRank metric tells us how much people have been talking, tweeting, digging, and commenting on blog posts. It is exactly what I needed!
So, I calculated the sum of PostRank scores per blog (over a short time frame), which reflects both the quantity and quality of blog posts. (A blog with just one article scoring PostRank 10 earned as many points as a blog with 10 articles of PostRank 1.) In this new edition you can see that the inclusion of PostRank had a tremendous effect on the rankings. And a good thing too! The stale and smelly old blogs with only few fresh articles all tumbled down the list, while fresh blogs with lots of high quality content are all going up! It also resulted in a new number one!! Scott Hanselman has taken over from Joel Spolsky, which is understandable, as Scott produces many more popular articles these days than Joel does.
As I told you before, the other metrics I use are Google PageRank, Technorati Authority, Alexa Rank, Google links, and Twitter Grader Rank. (For more information see: How to Make a Top Blog List) Note that PostRank somewhat favors aggregated blogs with multiple authors, because they usually produce more posts per week. On the other hand, the Twitter Grader Rank favors individual authors, because individual Twitter accounts are usually more popular than collective accounts. So that should even things out...
(If you want the full list with all individual metrics, download the Excel file here.)
I hope you will enjoy the new edition of this list. It was, as usual, a tremendous amount of work. If you like the results, then please tweet, digg, bookmark, and comment the hell out of it! I need it. I must take back the lead from that other Dutch guy.
(Note: if you want me to include your blog on this list next time, send me a message via email or Twitter!)
(Update 1-7-2009: The list does not contain blogs where the authors exclusively write about specific tools or technologies, like .NET, Java. Every blog should have at least _some_ content that is of interest to every developer regardless of technical background. Scott Hanselman is a good example of that. He often writes about MS technologies, but also regularly about more generic topics.)
Legend
TT = This Time
LT = Last Time
Note: for some of the statistics I happily used the script that was kindly supplied by Steven Machtelinckx. This saved me a lot of time... Thanks Steven!
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I couldn't help myself.
I just had to do it.
But I'm sure you don't mind.
After the Top 200 Social Media Blogs, Top 100 Blogs for Developers, Top 100 Books for Managers & Leaders, and Twitter Top 100 for Developers, I really really really wanted to know what the 100 most influential Twitter tools in the world are.
I know, there are already lots of articles out there with collections of Twitter tools (see below). But none of those artices have told us which Twitter tools are the really important ones. None of them have ranked the tools.
So I made this list. And I hope you like it.
As with my other lists, the one is based on a number of different criteria. This time I used Alexa Rank (AR), Google Page Rank (PR), Google links (GL), and TwitStats score (TS). I ranked the tools according to each of these criteria, and then calculated their average scores. The result is a nice reflection of the overall power/influence that these tools have in the Twittersphere.
If you want to stay informed about other (future) top 100 lists that I will be making, then simply follow me and stay in touch.
Enjoy!
| # | Tool | AR | PR | GL | TS |
| 1 | TweetDeck | 9957 | 7 | 5430 | 10.86 |
| 2 | FriendFeed | 1270 | 7 | 5740 | 2.59 |
| 3 | TwitterFeed | 10277 | 7 | 2460 | 6.68 |
| 4 | Ping.fm | 6836 | 7 | 2120 | 2.03 |
| 5 | Twhirl | 31403 | 7 | 2790 | 3.4 |
| 6 | Twellow | 12687 | 6 | 1030 | |
| 7 | Tweetie | 24284 | 5 | 2150 | 7.68 |
| 8 | Twitturly | 40753 | 6 | 1220 | |
| 9 | Twitterholic | 11975 | 6 | 656 | |
| 10 | #hashtags | 25359 | 6 | 842 | |
| 11 | Seesmic Desktop | 28123 | 7 | 984 | 1.85 |
| 12 | Twitterrific | 23955 | 6 | 1210 | 1.56 |
| 13 | BrightKite | 13333 | 7 | 1260 | 0.79 |
| 14 | Twitscoop | 22532 | 6 | 553 | |
| 15 | TwitterFox | 45778 | 6 | 955 | 2.05 |
| 16 | TwitterCounter | 6016 | 5 | 735 | |
| 17 | TwitterBerry | 40366 | 6 | 1280 | 1.47 |
| 18 | HootSuite | 9067 | 5 | 1090 | 1.5 |
| 19 | TwitterFon | 62616 | 6 | 1090 | 1.95 |
| 20 | Tweet Scan | 45877 | 6 | 629 | |
| 21 | Mobypicture | 29764 | 6 | 720 | 1.31 |
| 22 | TweetLater | 5811 | 5 | 465 | |
| 23 | WeFollow | 5466 | 6 | 1550 | 0.15 |
| 24 | TweetStats | 34531 | 5 | 779 | |
| 25 | Monitter | 52711 | 6 | 545 | |
| 26 | Twitpic | 468 | 4 | 2150 | 2.03 |
| 27 | FriendOrFollow | 18403 | 5 | 354 | |
| 28 | Twitter Grader | 4618 | 6 | 783 | 0.08 |
| 29 | TweetValue | 60802 | 5 | 681 | |
| 30 | HelloTxt | 41046 | 6 | 922 | 0.19 |
| 31 | Twistory | 66530 | 6 | 394 | |
| 32 | Qwitter | 56437 | 6 | 322 | |
| 33 | TweetBeep | 44875 | 5 | 331 | |
| 34 | SocialToo | 41748 | 5 | 320 | |
| 35 | TweetGrid | 44473 | 6 | 467 | 0.1 |
| 36 | Tweetburner | 39591 | 6 | 423 | 0.1 |
| 37 | Twittelator | 123380 | 6 | 525 | 0.44 |
| 38 | TwitterBar | 22780 | 5 | 319 | 0.25 |
| 39 | TweetMeme | 19521 | 6 | 961 | 0.02 |
| 40 | LoudTwitter | 210767 | 5 | 823 | |
| 41 | Just Tweet It | 47098 | 5 | 226 | |
| 42 | Retweetist | 47001 | 5 | 219 | |
| 43 | TwitThat | 28136 | 5 | 245 | 0.31 |
| 44 | Mr. Tweet | 18200 | 6 | 443 | 0.04 |
| 45 | DestroyTwitter | 163139 | 6 | 429 | 0.52 |
| 46 | Tiny Twitter | 118766 | 7 | 446 | 0.12 |
| 47 | PeopleBrowsr | 65877 | 6 | 222 | 0.21 |
| 48 | Twibble | 120580 | 5 | 525 | 0.21 |
| 49 | Splitweet | 33240 | 5 | 530 | 0.06 |
| 50 | ÜberTwitter | 121249 | 5 | 353 | 0.69 |
| 51 | WhosTalkin | 64750 | 5 | 177 | |
| 52 | TwitterHawk | 75847 | 5 | 173 | |
| 53 | GroupTweet | 187505 | 5 | 374 | |
| 54 | Twibs | 40300 | 5 | 104 | |
| 55 | Shareaholic | 103402 | 6 | 141 | |
| 56 | Foamee | 368279 | 6 | 361 | |
| 57 | TwitterFriends | 61849 | 5 | 140 | |
| 58 | TweepSearch | 80753 | 5 | 160 | |
| 59 | Twubble | 90146 | 5 | 150 | |
| 60 | TwitterLocal | 100166 | 5 | 166 | |
| 61 | CoTweet | 80818 | 5 | 398 | 0.08 |
| 62 | Snitter | 262013 | 5 | 341 | |
| 63 | Slandr | 205443 | 5 | 249 | 0.66 |
| 64 | TwitterMap | 248667 | 6 | 171 | |
| 65 | iTweet 2 | 77920 | 5 | 235 | 0.14 |
| 66 | Twitbin | 56554 | 5 | 341 | 0.07 |
| 67 | Secrettweet | 123662 | 5 | 166 | |
| 68 | Straw Poll | 159044 | 5 | 208 | |
| 69 | Spaz | 108959 | 5 | 490 | 0.07 |
| 70 | TwittEarth | 264424 | 5 | 246 | |
| 71 | Pocketwit | 5 | 495 | 0.06 | |
| 72 | Twemes | 185592 | 5 | 171 | |
| 73 | Twitxr | 79506 | 5 | 396 | 0.04 |
| 74 | Twitoria | 56409 | 5 | 63 | |
| 75 | Twitter for iPhone | 337473 | 5 | 298 | |
| 76 | twtQpon | 149956 | 5 | 140 | |
| 77 | Twilert | 143225 | 5 | 127 | |
| 78 | Your Twitter Karma | 23010 | 4 | 110 | |
| 79 | Who Should I Follow? | 98096 | 5 | 85 | |
| 80 | FoodFeed | 273626 | 5 | 145 | |
| 81 | TweeTube | 233817 | 5 | 125 | |
| 82 | Twinfluence | 51281 | 4 | 141 | |
| 83 | SnapTweet | 244774 | 5 | 118 | |
| 84 | Twtcard | 401483 | 5 | 178 | |
| 85 | TwitterPatterns | 101374 | 5 | 59 | |
| 86 | Follow Cost | 138638 | 5 | 71 | |
| 87 | Xpenser | 162026 | 5 | 90 | |
| 88 | Tweetake | 236846 | 5 | 101 | |
| 89 | TwitterMass | 68749 | 5 | 14 | |
| 90 | Twitpay | 270415 | 5 | 95 | |
| 91 | Twittertise | 100467 | 4 | 150 | |
| 92 | Twinkle | 37570 | 5 | 42 | 0.04 |
| 93 | TrackThis | 301718 | 5 | 99 | |
| 94 | Retweetrank | 74208 | 4 | 118 | |
| 95 | Twitter Digest | 5 | 50 | ||
| 96 | Twitteroo | 309061 | 5 | 91 | |
| 97 | Twitter Tools | 26293 | 3 | 66 | 0.73 |
| 98 | EasyTweets | 91840 | 4 | 0.07 | |
| 99 | Hahlo | 373444 | 5 | 107 | 0.06 |
| 100 | Tweetr | 289943 | 5 | 299 | 0.02 |
Note: for this top 100 list I used various collections of Twitter tools from the following sources:
Twitter Toolbox: 60+ Twitter Tools
Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools
Top 40 Twitter Tools
11 Useful Twitter Tools That Don't Require Your Password
10 More Must Have Twitter Tools
10 Twitter Tools That Help You Work Smarter
10 Twitter Tools to Effectively Manage Your Followers
99 Essential Twitter Tools and Applications
10 Essential Twitter Tools for Business
100 Twitter Tools to Help You Achieve Your Goals
27 Twitter Tools to Help You Find and Manage Followers
25+ Incredibly Useful Twitter Tools and Firefox Plugins
Twitter Clients, June 9, 2009
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