Agile Management by Ángel Medinilla

My Rating: 8 / 10

This is the first book I have read on Agile Management and from Angel Medinilla (the author). My approach was to learn the agile approach to both project and organisational management. My background has been waterfall based hence broadening my knowledge was the aim of the game here.

I liked Agile Management as I was able to understand both the history of agile and what it means to be agile; motivation, self-organisation, structures, capacity, workload, culture, change etc. The chapters were typically longer than I’m used to but had depth of both theory and practicality.

What I really liked was the research that had gone into the book. For example, throughout the book there were many quotes from various experts in their respective fields. Each quote had an impact on me to solidify the topic that was being explained. One of those was from Drucker who said … “so much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work”. Very apt quote for the topic of agile and what the movement has been trying to achieve.

Suffice to say that this book is a great introduction into the agile world when it comes to management. If you want to learn more about agile, then there are other books that are more suitable.

Three key takeaways from the book:

1. Leadership from an evolutionary perspective is not imposed by accepted. You can’t just appointment someone as a “leader” and expect everyone to follow them.
2. When the west observed the Japanese innovation on lean management the problem was easily identified. American management and workers wanted to rule, command and control versus teach.
3. Agile structures have a simple principle: you do not assign people to projects. You assign projects to teams; period!