Manifesto for Agile Software Development
by Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Jeff Sutherland, and 14 others · agilemanifesto.org
The 2001 founding document of the Agile movement, stating four values and twelve principles signed by seventeen software thought leaders. Establishes the philosophy that Scrum and every other agile method operationalize.
More resources on Agile & Scrum
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Derby and Larsen's practitioner manual for running effective retrospectives, with a five-stage structure and a catalog of concrete facilitation activities. Targets the continuous-improvement loop that most teams perform poorly.
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
Mike Cohn's standard reference on writing and managing user stories: structure, splitting, acceptance criteria, estimation, and planning. Addresses the single artifact teams most often get wrong when defining product backlog work.
Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum
Mike Cohn's field guide to adopting Scrum at organizational scale, covering team structure, role transitions, distributed teams, scaling, and metrics. Pattern-and-case-study driven rather than introductory, aimed at people actually leading a transition.
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland's narrative account of why Scrum works, drawing on its origins in his fighter-pilot and software careers. Frames Scrum for a general management audience through stories rather than ceremony mechanics.
The 2020 Scrum Guide
The canonical 13-page definition of Scrum by its co-creators, covering the framework's roles, events, artifacts, and underlying empirical theory. Free, brand-neutral, and the single source of truth that every certification and practitioner defers to.