 I have just read the freshly published book “Agile for Business” by Erik Hultgren, Dick Lyhammar and Christer Dahlström, and wanted to share my thoughts about it here on Kinactic's blog.
Erik Hultgren and Dick Lyhammar are hosts for the popular Swedish podcast “Agilpodden” which has been running for some time now and become a very well received channel of great content for agilists in Sweden. Christer Dahlström is an experienced agile coach and visualization specialist. In a compact and easy to grasp fashion, the authors manage to cram down an impressive amount of agile concepts, tools and mind sets in just 80 pages. Divided into short, easy to read essays and illustrated by Mr Dahlströms fun and informational drawings - the book is suitable for a nice afternoon reading session. The book promises to cover the basics of agile, which it truly does. If you are not into agile at all, the book will get you conversational on a number of topics in no time. I imagine the book could serve well as a primer for those who need that, and as a reference for those who quickly want to brush up on topics related to agile. The subtitle of the book, “maximize your business value by understanding the basics of agile”, is where I find a bit of an “over promise”. While the the concepts are neatly described and easy to read, the connection to business value and why agile is indeed a necessary part of any modern company is where I feel the book falls short of expectations. I’d wish for a more in depth discussion not only of the tools and practices of agile organizations - but also of the external driving forces that surround a lot of enterprises today and that makes agile practices a key element in any serious company’s successful strategy. In summary: Reading this book is probably one of the easiest ways to get up to speed on agile and related topics - and therefore a few hours well spent. If you’re interested in corporate strategy and why agile is for you, the book falls somewhat short on making the connection. Comments are closed.
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