I learned about this book from an Agile Amped podcast by the author. Given my role as an Agile subject matter expert at Lirio, reading this book is part of my self-guided professional development. The timing was excellent given in late 2020, I began exploring other areas of the company — i.e., finance, sales, IT — to apply Agile thinking.
For a chapter-by-chapter summary, check out my extended summary here.
If you’re looking for a tool- and framework-agnostic way of introducing Agile to teams that aren’t in the business of creating and delivering software, I’d easily recommend that you read this book (or buy it for your team). There’s just enough information (and probing questions) to get you started with a foundation on which you can build. The intended audience is someone who’d likely be running the team, as there are more practical tools for setting that person up for success; however, others on the team may better understand the process if they read the book as well.
Gil doesn’t hide common frameworks (e.g., Scrum, Lean); however, he encourages readers to start with first principles and understand the problems they need to solve and why. He also outlines how things typically fail and why that happens.
Something I like about Gil’s approach is level-setting about the different types of work: new work, opportunities for making proven work more efficient, operational (business-as-usual) tasks, and support. This makes it clearer in my opinion why there are many Agile instantiations (e.g., Lean, Kanban). For example, don’t waste your energy standardizing a way of working together when you don’t even know if your customers want what you have to offer.
Throughout the book there’s a theme of not copy/pasting ways of working from companies, industries, or departments that don’t align with what yours does. You’d still do well to understand those other ways; however, don’t cargo-cult your way to success. Build the process, culture, metrics, deliverables, etc. your team needs, reflect on how it’s going, then add/remove/change what’s needed.