Back in the 90’s self-managed teams were all the rage but they had a high rate of failure mainly because team members lacked people skills. These ideas of self-managed teams were borrowed by the Agile movement when in 2001 they formulated a ‘new’ way of working, based on Agile principles. However, self-managed teams only work well when team members understand a lot about human behavior and why people do the things they do!

This short book by Clarke Ching is a "biztech" parable for software developers who want to survive—and then thrive—through the credit crunch. We have republished the book in a four-part series. In part three, when things seem at their very worst, Bob has a "light bulb moment" that just might save the day. Follow the story as our characters fight to keep their jobs by implementing creative business ideas and management skills taken from agile development.

There are definite signs of Agile methods (with a capital A) may be losing mind share or, at the very least, suffering from a certain amount of perhaps over-hype or over familiarity. Or maybe it is just the rise in cases of AFS (Agile Fatigue Syndrome). For some, agile is giving away to the rise of lean software development. Where will it end?

Joshua Kerievsky maps agile transitions to art styles and identifies elements that lead to success or failure, offering an excellent perspective on the art of agile transitioning and what style(s) will work best for you.