9/14/2019 The top 20 most influential Agile people - Emergn

The top 20 most influential Agile people

By Paul Dolman-Darrall agile, culture  

We buy the books, read the blogs, look for insights on twitter, hope they will follow us back, and search their names. It may be
known as cult of personality, but it is very clear that we are in uenced by particular individuals in the Agile community.

We have used a combination of statistics from a number of di erent sites, Amazon Book Sales (US, UK & EU), the Top 200 Agile
blogs (previously published on agilescout.com), Google insight and trend information, Klout data, Twitter numbers and rankings,
the top 100 Agile books (which measures reader’s scores), and combined that with a nal editorial decision to produce a list of
the most in uential people in Agile. This list is de nitely not meant to be de nitive and is posted with both good intentions and
with good humour. A lot of data was gathered using Mechnical Turk, and then has been compiled by the editor. As this is an
editorial, thus subjective, it represents the opinions of the writer, not the company, nor the scores produced by the Mechanical
Turk. We considered over 500 names during the whole process. However, if you are sure your name should be on the list –
please mail me in con dence.

I hope you enjoy the list.

20. Henrik Kniberg

One of the few to have books released on the big three (Scrum, Kanban and XP). Henrik Kniberg is popular in Scandinavia. He has
recently led the foreign translation of the Agile Manifesto and his books have had more than 500,000 readers

19. James Shore

James believes that great software development teams consistently deliver market success, technical success and personal
success for team members and stakeholders. He was an early adopter of Agile development and wrote a best selling book – The
Art of Agile Development – which is also a popular blog.

18. Lyssa Adkins

The coaches’ coach. A certi ed scrum trainer who wrote a best-selling book Coaching Agile Teams. Possibly a surprise entry for
some, but with a popular blog, strong book sales and internet searches. Lyssa Adkins makes the list.

17. Israel Gat

The Cutter Consortium Agile Director. Has lead large-scale agile transformation at BMC software and is a self-professed Agile
Executive. His book, the Concise Executive Guide to Agile has become a best seller stateside.

16. Jim Highsmith

Jim Highsmith (the third technically), is a winner of the Stevens Prize. Now with Thoughtworks, he acts as a spokesman on their
behalf. He has also served as Director of Agile for the Cutter Consortium. He wrote Adaptive Software Development in 1999
where he used mountain climbing to illustrate his points about teamwork, planning and adaption.

15. Roman Pichler

A surprise entrant, but his focus on the Product Owner has increased his in uence in the community. With the leading book on
the subject and an increasingly popular blog. Roman Pichler makes our list.

14. Alistair Cockburn

Alistair helped write the Agile Manifesto and the Agile Declaration of Interdependence. He invented a set of methods called
Crystal and has recently set up the ICAgile Certi cation. Despite limited success in this space, he continues to be in uential within
the Agile community.

13. Esther Derby

Esther is well known for her work in helping teams. In particular she is recognised as one of the leading thinkers on
retrospectives, and co-authored a book on the subject with Diana Larsen.

12. Scott Ambler

The face of Agile IBM. Scott Ambler has always been controversial in the community for his continued support of uni ed
processes as opposed to the Scrum/XP combination. Scott with his leading role for IBM often has the ear of many large
organisations and is also about to release a book on Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD as it is a ectionately known).

11. Mary Poppendieck

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Mary and her delightful husband Tom, introduced us to the world of Toyota. Still very popular on the circuit, they have recently
been talking about design thinking (the next book maybe). Mary started the whole movement of bringing Agile and Lean
together.

10. Kent Beck

There are those who will be very critical of Kent Beck’s position. He drives a hard-core fan base, but the reality is that XP seems to
be unfashionable today compared to other Agile methods. Kent Beck has a highly popular twitter account, but despite two
excellent books, he was not on the best-seller list provided by Amazon.

9. Je Sutherland

The second founder of Scrum. Je Sutherland continues to promote hyper productivity at conferences and the beauty of 30 day
software. As Je points out on his blog, interest in agile scrum continues to grow, and it is still the main Agile approach for
software development teams today. Je has never really been a writer of books, but has two coming out, which if they sell well,
may improve his position.

8. Craig Larman

A surprise high entrant. Craig has three titles, which all sell reasonably well which drives his in uence. Still one of the leading
authors on how to scale Agile.

7. Ron Je ries

One of the three founder of Extreme Programming, and though Kent Beck typically gets more credit, most people name the
practices as listed by Ron Je ries. Still active in the community today, he has a very popular blog.

6. Jurgen Appelo

A bigger name in Europe than America. Jurgen Appelo has taken the market by storm with his Management 3.0 book about
complexity. Has recently been an advocate of the Stoos movement and Agile Lean Europe. He has also released a book called
How to change the world. He is one of the few ‘new guard’ to make the list and so it may be worth reading.

5. David Anderson

David Anderson is the father of software Kanban. Though he scores considerably lower (book sales for example) than I expected,
one cannot ignore the impact he has had on the community through Kanban. He has recently launched accreditation and is the
chairman of the Lean SSC.

4. Martin Fowler

Over 40,000 twitter followers (making him the most popular in the Agile community) and a hard-core fan base makes Martin
Fowler a key in uential member of the community. Having spent most of his career at Thoughtworks, he continues to be a
strong advocate for refactoring.

3. Uncle Bob Martin

Highly in uential on the development community. He has several books in the bestsellers list, often years after their release and
is very popular on twitter. Uncle Bob as he is known has been a software professional since 1970 and initiated the meeting which
led to the Agile Manifesto.

2. Ken Schwaber

Even with Scrum’s market share under attack from those choosing to use Kanban, the highly criticised Scrum Master program,
which Ken has replicated and the controversial resignation (technically caused by a bicycle accident) from the Scrum Alliance. Ken
still remains very popular. Behind the original invention of Scrum, he still resonates with a large proportion of the community.

1. Mike Cohn

Well, somebody has to be number one. It was a surprise to me that the clear winner is not responsible for the leading Scrum or
Kanban approaches. Mike Cohn, the Scrum Alliance Chairman, author of multiple leading books on the subject has been
awarded rst place. In almost every category, Mike Cohn’s name appeared in the top 10, and almost always in rst or second
position. Congratulations Mike.

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