This book is an invitation to a conversation. It is also an exhortation to agile coaches, consultants, and advocates to look first at themselves when they seek to transform others. It affirms that all agile transformations are first personal transformations. And, it provides pointers to support personal transformation on an ongoing basis. Jean Richardson is a consultant and coach with nearly 30 years of experience in software development, nearly half of that time spent in learning about agile and participating in the agile movement. For the last six years she has coached individuals and teams in agile aspiring organizations. Praise for The Preservation of the Agile Heart: It is exciting to read such an insightful book on organizational excellence, written by a poet and expressing a graceful understanding of integral philosophy in action. --- Allan Combs Author of Consciousness Explained Better and The Radiance of Being Jean combines her love and talent for poetry with thoughtful questions and hard challenges. She encourages the reader to examine their own motivations and deeply explore the ideas behind the agile movement. She really gets to the heart and admonishes the reader to challenge themselves, their preconceptions and assumptions about organizational change and individual transformation. This is not light reading, it is deep, meaningful, transformational and necessary reading for every agile coach who wants to make a lasting difference through their work. ---Shane Hastie Director of Agile Learning Programs International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile.com) I have the sudden flash that this book is a good step beyond "taking the red pill." I regard Tobias Meyer's short book as one that starts that pill; this maybe helps keep it down. ---Dave Gipp, Agile Coach Personal. Powerful. Beautiful. The Preservation of the Agile Heart is a look at agile through a poet's eyes, revealing intensely vital distinctions unseen by casual observers. Discover more within agile, and yourself, as you move from mindset to consciousness, guided by the always thought-provoking Jean Richardson. ---April K. Mills, author of Everyone is a Change Agent