Book writing guide

Introduction

In this section I’ll introduce you to my book and what it took to write it. This should give you insights into what it takes to be successful and perhaps inspire you to try yourself.

The secrets of scaled Agile

What is behind successful scaling? It certainly isn't an easy thing to do well. Each chapter will take you through a different problem and give you practical steps to resolve it. This book is framework-agnostic and will help if you use SAFe, LeSS, Nexus or a custom set-up. It is designed to help you maximise the business benefits of Agile.

This draws upon my extensive experience and includes failures that I wish I could have avoided. If you are thinking about scaling, this will help you to avoid the many pitfalls. If you are already scaling and it isn't going to plan, you should use the book to diagnose why and apply the appropriate fixes. I don't just cover processes but also mindset and organisational culture. These commonly ignored aspects can derail even the best process.

Many of the chapters are applicable even if you aren’t scaling. I have made the book as accessible as possible, making it valuable to both experts and complete novices.

Becoming a writer

Have you ever wondered what it is like to write a book? Where would you even start?

Writing a book is a big commitment with great rewards. The Secrets of Scaled Agile took me many months, working 8+ hour days, mainly on the weekends. Writing helps you firm up your knowledge and is of great value even as a self-improvement method. In addition, many of my friends and colleagues now have a deeper understanding of the complex subjects I frequently discuss. Being able to refer to specific chapters when asked relevant questions at work also saves a great deal of time.

In this section, I’ll discuss my book and then show you how I wrote it using a three-part YouTube series.

How to write a book

This three-part video series will show you how. It takes you through where to start and the tools needed to do it.

Part 1

An overview of what it takes to produce a non-fiction book. This is based on my own writing experience. May also help if you're writing a fiction book.

Part 2

How to maximise your chance of being successful, with many hints and tips. It also shows you the LeanPub online publishing tool being used with the Caret text editor.

Part 3

This shows how to create a good book cover, starting with my first (terrible) attempt. It also shows the power of Canva. Canva has a free version and is a great place to start for inspiration.

Note! I had to change the book cover after this due to the use of AI on Amazon. If you use AI even on the cover, it can flag the whole book as being written using it and this is not good!