Book Review: Agile Excellence For Product Managers – A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams

The game of software product development is the one of adding value to the businesses and customers.

With rapid changes in business environment, typical waterfall SDLC fails to deliver value, because by the time the scope is developed, business requirements change!

Adoption of Agile Development Methodology by software product managers is steadily increasing because Agile embraces business change into products.

I recently read the book “Agile Excellence For Product Managers” by Greg Cohen. This book is a guide to develop winning products with agile development teams. When most of the books on Agile focus on the process, this book focuses on the product manager’s perspective of how Agile process should be managed. The book also has a small section that touches upon XP and Lead Software Development.

I have been studying Agile for over a couple of years now, and have also implemented Agile in a number of  projects. I still found this book useful because it also deals with issues of organizational agility and importance of leadership in implementing Agile.

Agility is a mindset, more than just a process. For this very reason, adopting Agile means an organizational change in mindset. Agile is a shift from typical command-and-control structure to a trust based, highly accountable model of software development.

Bottom line: If you are a product manager who is keen to explore Agile or is already using Agile, this book will help you dig it little deeper and gain better understanding.