Yesterday I shared my top ten book recommendations for a new leader of an Agile IT project. Today I'll share the rest of the books I added to the project library. These are some of the books I owned and loaned. They reflect the way I tried to lead and shape the team. We bought them for them team library because I wanted to make sure they continued to be in ready reach after I moved on.

These are the books that bubbled to the top as the most influential to me as a thinker in a leadership role. These are the books I hope my team makes time to read while they continue to deliver CG-LIMS.

I've provided Amazon links for easy access to reviews. For those books that I'd blogged about, I've provided a pointer to those posts as well.

Poke the Box by Seth Godin, 2011. See March 1, 2011 post "Poke the Box" and August 15, 2011 "SPEAR-ing Dogma."

Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li, 2010.

Succeeding With Agile: Software Development Using Scrum by Mike Cohn, 2009. Just about everything Cohn's written can be useful for an Agile development team. We have several of his books in the team library.

Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn, 2005. See July 23, 2012 post "Next Wave of Planning."

The Starfish and The Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman, 2008.

Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, 2007.

Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, 1977.

A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum by Elizabeth Woodward et al, 2010.

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M. R. Covey, 2008.

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher et al, 1991.

No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert I. Sutton, 2010.

Critical Chain by Eliyahu Goldratt, 1997.

Character in Action: The U.S. Coast Guard on Leadership by Donald T. Phillips & James M. Loy, 2003. This book should be considered required reading for anyone in a leadership role in the Coast Guard.

Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte, 1983.

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman, 2009.

As I prepare to turn over the reins of the CG-LIMS project to another leader, I want to provide my replacement a reading list. I will use this post to share ten books: one book a month between now and when I'm replaced. These books have have influenced me over the years as I've delivered IT tools. This list could also be useful for anyone working in the field either in government or in the private sector.

These ten books are a subset of the project library we created a few months ago. It was hard to pare the list to just ten, so I may share the whole list in a future post. I've constrained the list to ten books so my relief can read one book a month between now and when they arrive. Some are classics, some are fairly new. You may have already read many of them. Hopefully there is at least one that's new to you and piques your interest.

I provided links for easy access to a description and reviews. These aren't affiliate links. There's nothing in it for me. I've also provided links to posts in which I've shared some specific takeaways from the books in project blogs over the years.

Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, 1988. See the July 21, 2010 post, "User Experience."

Rework by JasonFried & David Heinemeier-Hansson, 2010. See the April 22, 2010 post, "Just Enough" and the April 26, 2010 post "Illusions."

Linchpin by Seth Godin, 2011. See the Feb 8, 2010 post, "Ship!" See the comments to that post for some great links as well.

Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen, 1993. See the December 14, 2008 post, "Putting People First." Also, much of my 2003 Coast Guard Innovation Expo Speech drew form lessons on this book. The slides with notes are on SlideShare. The notes are also available separately.

The Agile Samurai by Jonathan Rasmusson, 2010. This is a straightforward introduction to Agile software development. This served as a common knowledge base for the development team. It's a good basic introduction for anyone considering delivering using an Agile methodology. The first mention of the book is in the comments to the September 26, 2011 post, "Rules of the Game." I also described in in three more posts, January 5, 2012 "Prioritize," May 30, 2012 "Show, Don't Tell," and Emil's April 8, 2012 "Interpreting Development Burndown Charts."

Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks, 1995 (20th anniversary edition). See the September 20, 2011 post, "Why Document?"

The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge, 1990. See the January 21, 2010 post, "Simple, Familiar Message," the February 16, 2010 post, "Take Five," and the February 18, 2010 post "Finance Drives Logistics."

Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Hammond, 1996. See the March 12, 2012 post, "What Did We Do Well?"

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, 2011.

Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, 2010.

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, 1984. See November 16, 2011 post, "What's the Goal?"

As I read some of the blog posts this evening to share the links for each book, I was reminded of the great work done by the team who is now delivering CG-LIMS one step at a time. It is an honor to work with each of you!

Reading and Leading

Reading List

Simply Dan