# Agile Development Resources

## Knowledge

- [The Scrum Guide (2020) — Schwaber & Sutherland](https://scrumguides.org/)
  The 13-page normative definition of Scrum. Nothing else is Scrum. Use for: exact meaning of Sprint, Increment, Definition of Done, the three accountabilities. Read it once, in full — it is shorter than most blog posts about it.

- [The Kanban Guide — kanbanguides.org (Vacanti & Vega)](https://kanbanguides.org/the-kanban-guide/)
  Short, framework-neutral definition of Kanban for knowledge work. Use for: the four mandatory flow metrics (WIP, throughput, work item age, cycle time), Definition of Workflow, Service Level Expectation.

- [Manifesto for Agile Software Development + the 12 Principles](https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html)
  The 2001 source document. Use for: settling arguments about what agile actually claims. Principle 1 (early and continuous delivery) and 7 (working software is the measure of progress) underwrite everything in this course.

- [The Humanizing Work Guide to Splitting User Stories — Richard Lawrence & Peter Green](https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-humanizing-work-guide-to-splitting-user-stories/)
  The nine splitting patterns plus a decision flowchart. The most practical single page in this list. Use for: any time a piece of work is too big and it isn't obvious how to cut it.

- [INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks — Bill Wake (2003)](https://xp123.com/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/)
  The origin of the INVEST acronym. Use for: judging whether a slice is actually a slice. Source of "slice vertically through technical layers rather than horizontally".

- [Elephant Carpaccio — Alistair Cockburn](https://alistaircockburn.com/Elephant-Carpaccio) · [facilitation guide (Kniberg)](https://blog.crisp.se/2013/07/25/henrikkniberg/elephant-carpaccio-facilitation-guide)
  The canonical exercise for slicing into 15–20 pieces where you thought there were 3. Use for: deliberate practice on slicing; the guide is runnable solo.

- [Making sense of MVP — Henrik Kniberg](https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp)
  The skateboard→car illustration, and the Earliest Testable / Usable / Lovable reframe. Use for: deciding what the first slice of a whole *product* should be.

- [Shape Up — Ryan Singer (Basecamp), free online](https://basecamp.com/shapeup)
  Fixed time, variable scope; appetite instead of estimate; six-week cycles. Written for small teams that own their own process — the closest fit to this mission of anything on this list. Use for: scoping and betting, not for day-to-day flow.

## Wisdom (Communities)

- [r/ExperiencedDevs](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/)
  Heavily moderated, low tolerance for process cargo-culting. Use for: sanity-checking whether a practice is worth it at your scale.

- [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/) — search `shape up`, `kanban solo`
  Founder-heavy audience with direct experience of running process at team-of-one scale. Use for: how others adapted these practices without a team.

## Gaps

- No strong source yet on **solo retrospectives** / personal kanban with real evidence behind it. Searching.
- No source yet on **probabilistic forecasting** (Monte Carlo from throughput) — Vacanti's *Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability* is the likely candidate but is a paid book; needs checking before recommending.