What I’ve Been Reading – Employee Engagement and Agile Product Management

I continued my trend from last week of reading a book by Patrick Lencioni and a book about Scrum Product Ownership.

The Truth About Employee Engagement by Patrick Lencioni

In The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery, Patrick Lencioni tells a story about a recently retired CEO who is trying to answer a question – why do some people enjoy their jobs while others are miserable? This is a question that I have asked myself many times, so I was curious to see what Lencioni’s answer was.

Lencioni asserts that job misery is the result of three things: anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurement. If you want a quick overview of what these mean and how they relate to job misery, check out Leoncio’s page about it.

The Truth About Employee Engagement seems to be targeted at managers, although anyone will benefit from reading it. As a manager, there is practical, immediately applicable advice that you can begin practicing. Non-managers will learn why they sometimes feel unsatisfied in their jobs and what they can do about it.

Agile Product Management with Scrum by Roman Pichler

In Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love, Roman Pichler discusses a variety of practices that Product Owners in Scrum can use to manage products. This book is the most concise and relevant book I have found that details best practices for Product Owners. It’s like a condensed version of Agile Estimating and Planning that is targeted at Product Owners.

Last week, I was pretty hard on Scrum Product Ownership by Robert Galen because of some sketchy advice in his book that I thought might lead new Product Owners astray. In Agile Product Management with Scrum, I found only solid advice from Pichler as well as other sources that Pichler referenced. All of the shortcomings in Scrum Product Ownership are nonexistent in Agile Product Management with Scrum.

I would recommend Agile Product Management with Scrum to people that are either new to the Product Owner role or need more direction on practices they can apply. I would not recommend this book to experienced Product Owners as they will be familiar with most of the material. Also, you can skip this book if you’ve already read Agile Estimating and Planning because most of the content is covered in greater detail in that book.