Global Scrum Gathering® Minneapolis 2018
Recommended Agile & Scrum
Books and Websites

Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide is just what the name implies: a hands-on, detailed description of facilitating Open Space Technology (OST). OST is an effective, economical, fast, and easily repeatable strategy for organizing meetings of between 5 and 2,000 participants that has been used in thousands of organizations in 134 countries and just keeps growing in popularity. Written by the originator of the method, this is the most authoritative book on the rationale,
procedures, and requirements of OST.
OST enables self-organizing groups of all sizes to deal with hugely complex issues in a very short period of time. This step-by-step user’s guide details what needs to be done before, during, and after an Open Space event.

Harrison Owen details all the practical considerations necessary to create Open Space. He begins with the most important question—should you use Open Space at all?—and examines what types of situations are appropriate for Open Space Technology and what types are not. He then goes on to look at nuts-and-bolts issues such as supplies, logistics, and who should come and how you should go about getting them there.

This third edition adds a survey of the current status of Open Space Technology around the world, an updated section on the latest available technology for report writing (a key aspect of the Open Space process), and an updated list of resources.

Open Space Technology: A User's Guide（Amazon）

The World Cafe is a flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing mutual knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action. Based on living systems thinking, this innovative approach creates dynamic networks of conversation that can catalyze an organization or community's own collective intelligence around its most important questions.
Filled with stories of actual Cafe dialogues in business, education, government, and community organizations across the globe, this uniquely crafted book demonstrates how the World Cafe can be adapted to any setting or culture. Examples from such varied organizations as Hewlett-Packard, American Society for Quality, the nation of Singapore, the University of Texas, and many others, demonstrate the process in action.
Along with its seven core design principles, The World Cafe offers practical tips for hosting "conversations that matter" in groups of any size- strengthening both personal relationships and people's capacity to shape the future together.

The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter（Amazon）

This book is an invaluable desk reference for facilitators, leaders, coaches and anyone who wants to engage in more effective learning and decision-making conversations. It offers over 1700 rich questions that you can borrow or adapt to improve your inquiry skills, and provides clear frameworks that point to when, where, and why particular questions are most useful.

Making Questions Work: A Guide to How and What to Ask for Facilitators, Consultants, Managers, Coaches, and Educators（Amazon）

"The Harvard Business Review looked at 300 of the most creative, successful executives in business and found that they shared a number of tendencies and characteristics, but one stood out at the top of the list--they all were master questioners. It's notnecessity, but a question--a "beautiful" question--that is the mother of invention. The world's leading innovators, inventors, business entrepreneurs, and creative minds, seem to be exceptionally good at asking questions. For some, their greatest successes--their breakthrough inventions, hot startup companies, the radical solutions they'd found to stubborn problems--could be traced to a "beautiful" question, or series of questions, they'd formulated and then answered. Innovator and writer Warren Berger, who's been asking questions his entire life, brilliantly captures these innovative query-makers to try and determine what makes a question particularly beautiful, from Tim Westegren wondering how to "map the DNA of music," a project that would grow into the wildly successful Pandora internet radio service, to Abby Brown, creating a school desk with a raised seat as she thought about how she could accommodate some fidgeting students. As A More Beautiful Question will illustrate, whether we're solving toughpersonal or professional problems, rejuvenating businesses, or schools, or government, or re-inventing the ways we live... it all begins with asking the right questions"--

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas（Amazon）

Coaching is an essential skill for leaders. But for most busy, overworked managers, coaching employees is done badly, or not at all. They’re just too busy, and it’s too hard to change.

But what if managers could coach their people in 10 minutes or less?

In Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.

Coaching is an art and it’s far easier said than done. It takes courage to ask a question rather than offer up advice, provide an answer, or unleash a solution. Giving another person the opportunity to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and create their own wisdom is both brave and vulnerable. It can also mean unlearning our “fix it” habits. In this practical and inspiring book, Michael shares seven transformative questions that can make a difference in how we lead and support. And, he guides us through the tricky part - how to take this new information and turn it into habits and a daily practice.

––Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong and Daring Greatly

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever（Amazon）

See how to mine the experience of your software development team continually throughout the life of the project. The tools and recipes in this book will help you uncover and solve hidden (and not-so-hidden) problems with your technology, your methodology, and those difficult "people" issues on your team.

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as "post-mortems") are only helpful at the end of the project--too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today.

Now, Derby and Larsen show you the tools, tricks, and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You'll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes, and how to scale these techniques up. You'll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project--not just at the end.

With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great (Pragmatic Programmers)（Amazon）

The New York Times and Washington Post bestseller that changed the way millions communicate

“[Crucial Conversations] draws our attention to those defining moments that literally shape our lives, our relationships, and our world. . . . This book deserves to take its place as one of the key thought leadership contributions of our time.”
―from the Foreword by Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“The quality of your life comes out of the quality of your dialogues and conversations. Here’s how to instantly uplift your crucial conversations.”
―Mark Victor Hansen, cocreator of the #1 New York Times bestselling series Chicken Soup for the Soul®

The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to:

・Prepare for high-stakes situations
・Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
・Make it safe to talk about almost anything
・Be persuasive, not abrasive

Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition（Amazon）

True to its tagline, "Fuel for Invention and Learning," this site is a treasure trove of design ideas and games for workshops and beyond. It covers a wide range of categories, including:

• Agile
• Communication
• Development
• Instructing
• Lean
• Management
• Product
• Requirements
• Team Dynamics