Review By: Daniel Luciano
07/15/2011

Over the years, I have read many books concerning agile development. XP, Scrum, and kanban were only of few of the topics in those books. Most of them were great, and they presented many new ideas and concepts to help improve a software development process. What was lacking from most of these books was how to manage a team of agile developers. Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo is the missing manual for ways to help managers manage. Even though the subtitle is Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders, I believe that many of the ideas presented in the book would apply to not only managers of agile developers, but also managers of any type of team.

Appelo’s book is the result of his personal experience and feedback he received on his blog. The book starts with Appelo’s presentation of his Management 3.0 model. The majority of the chapters discuss the model’s six views: energize people, empower teams, align constraints, develop competence, grow structure, and improve everything.

The book is in a well-thought-out format. I like the idea of presenting each view of the model, with one chapter on the theories behind the view followed by a chapter on how to apply those theories into actual practice. I have seen other books where the theories are present in the first section of the book, followed by a second section on the application of those theories. Appelo’s approach provides an easy transition to the practice while the theories are still fresh in your brain.

My favorite part of the book is the two chapters on developing competence. No matter what methodology you follow or practices you try to put into place, without a competent group of people you will not get very far.

Management 3.0 is great book, and I highly recommend it. You will want to read it multiple times, because of the wealth of information. The book is well suited for any level of management within an organization, and it fills a void in the current literature written about agile development.