Ken Schwaber, one of the `fathers' of Scrum, has co-authored two books on the topic with almost exactly the same title:
Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)
and
Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development)
Is there any difference between the two? Are they redundant? If yes, which one is the best?
Íf you look at amazon, (the link you provided) you see both books are marked as "often bought together". This is probably a hint that they are different.
(Or there are a lot of collectors of Ken Schwaber books).
GameCat: I think you could be on to something... I flicked through the books and at first they seemed to be very similar, they used many of the same words and phrases. On closer inspection I found they were cunningly arranged in different orders. I am guessing to give different meanings.
Amazon says people order these books together but are they disapointed when they get two books which are almost identical?
;-)
Tony
Having read them both, the differences between them, in my opinion is:
Agile Software Development With Scrum focuses on purely the development aspects of executing the Scrum process framework. The day to day execution of the process is explained and made logical, the development team treated as unit which is assumed to be relatively standard (as compared to the Project Management book). So Scrum roles and examples of the process are laid out. In my mind this is a book to help educate newcomers to Scrum.
The Agile Project Management Book expects that you already have some experience and understanding of the Scrum process framework. Using lots of examples of real cases studies of Scrum use it further refines the roles by showing how different organisations employed the process (and made effective use of the roles) in contexts which are typical of the real world. Eg: bosses who come in asking for more than was promised, deadlines being made on teams unrealistically, companies who try to overwork their staff, squabbling management, unmotivated teams.
The project management book goes further still and delves into how to make Scrum work in very large teams, the Scrum of Scrums is explained, and related subjects such as CMM are touched upon.
As for whether they are redundant.. I don't think either of them are redundant. The project management one I thought wasn't relevant to me, since I don't work in a large corporation with a complicated dev team setup and lots of people with big titles.
Which is better? Hmm.. tough call... neither is what I would call a 'gripping read'! You're reading for the subject however and if your passion is creating better quality software, faster and more manageably then they both have things of value.