Agile Estimating and Planning,   ISBN:9780131479418

Customer Rating: 

This book explains the in and outs of Agile development in an extremely concise and clear manner.
Essential reading for agile team

Customer Rating: 

I've been in the Agile world for a while now, and this is not my first read on the subject, yet I got a lot of new insights and understandings on the planning and estimating process in the Agile/SCRUM methodology.
Real everyday questions and dilemmas are addressed here in a straight forward way, supplying you with a toolbox of ideas and knowledge-base on these issues.
This one goes straight into my "MUST READ" list.

Customer Rating: 

This book is a must for any software project manager. If you are new to Agile, then you will appreciate the beginning chapters which go into great detail as to why agile is better than traditional waterfall approaches. I really like Mike's agile receipe, a blend of Scrum, XP, and Evo. If you are not familiar with these methods, I suggest reading a bit about them before reading Mike's book.

I would have preferred more detail and real life experience in the role modeling and user story sections. I've outlined some suggestions here at my blog: [...]. I'd also would have liked to seen an example for hardware engineering.

I definitely can't wait to read his next book!

Customer Rating: 

This book has very good explanations and examples about how to bridge the gap between classic project management and agile project management. For those of us project managers that have few experience managing teams and projects in the agile way, I consider this is a must read book. Most of the books are very focused at the agile practices, and how the team should apply these new practices, but don't address issues very important like budgeting, top management reporting, etc. that seem to be at odds with the agile software development. But Mike has found a way to bridge both worlds, giving you tools to keep track of your projects and be able to communicate status to top management in an effective way.

I have not tried all his recommendations yet, but the ones I have already tried are working as expected.

Definitely it is an excellent book for project managers that are used to manage projects in the classic way and are facing the challenge of change their mindset to the agile way.

Customer Rating: 

I had experience estimating but I wanted a deeper and wider knowledge of the "black science" of estimation.

So that I bought both this book for specifically focus on agile and "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" by Steve McConnell for a wider vision of estimation.

Both did their job, his book is very practical and I DO recommend it because:
1. It's very well structured both in format and content, so it's easy to read.
2. It talks about scheduling, planning for value (e.g. Kano Model).
3. It justifies very well the benefits of the agile approach.

So if you're a Project Manager who needs to plan and track projects using agile methods like Scrum, this book may give you 75% of what you need to know.

Alex Ballarin
IT Consultant
Cynertia Consulting, Barcelona, Spain