Summer of Books

I'm going on some long needed (and hard earned) vacation. I won't be blogging again for about one month (so this will likely be my only entry for July).

I've got a lot of REALLY GREAT and interesting books to try and catch up on. I hope to blog about them when I return. Here is what's on my summer reading list:

Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, by C. Otto Scharmer

I saw the executive summary and other chapters at www.TheoryU.com (also see www.dialogonleadership.org). This looks to be THE penultimate book on leadership for the Agile Organization. It doesn't even use the word "Agile" anywhere, but the values and principles from the book are so well aligned with Agile values and principles, it is positively uncanny.

Advanced Rails Recipes (by Mike Clark), and Deploying Rails Applications (by Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Bruce Tate, and Clinton Begin)

The latest Ruby & Rails books from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Implementing SOA: Total Architecture in Practice, by Paul C. Brown

I was extremely impressed with Paul Brown's earlier book on Succeeding with SOA: Realizing Business Value through Total Architecture, and am looking forward to this follow-up work.

Eating the IT Elephant: Moving from Greenfield Development to Brownfield, by Richard Hopkins and Kevin Jenkins

I received a review copy of this. Don't exactly know what to make of it just yet - but it does seem intriguing

Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development, by Scott L. Bain

This books looks to be an excellent "one stop shop" for learning the theory and practice of Test-Driven Development, Refactoring, Simple Design, and Design Patterns, all as part of a single integrated and coherent method

Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success, by Amr Elssamadisy

Amr has been writing for the Agile Journal and InfoQ.com and I have been looking forward to seeing this book in hardcopy.

The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility, by Michelle Sliger and Stacia Broderick

I think this is going to be THE book for all traditional PMPs trying to make the transition to agile project management.

Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile, by Alan Kelly

This books seems to have an interesting take on the connection between Agile, Lean, and Learning Organizations.

I have a few other books too, but they are much shorter :-)
Have a great July everybody!!!