Book picks similar to
Data Points: Visualization That Means Something by Nathan Yau
data
design
non-fiction
data-visualization
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases Through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
Jez Humble - 2010
This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours-- sometimes even minutes-no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base. Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid, reliable, low-risk delivery process. Next, they introduce the "deployment pipeline," an automated process for managing all changes, from check-in to release. Finally, they discuss the "ecosystem" needed to support continuous delivery, from infrastructure, data and configuration management to governance. The authors introduce state-of-the-art techniques, including automated infrastructure management and data migration, and the use of virtualization. For each, they review key issues, identify best practices, and demonstrate how to mitigate risks. Coverage includes - Automating all facets of building, integrating, testing, and deploying software - Implementing deployment pipelines at team and organizational levels - Improving collaboration between developers, testers, and operations - Developing features incrementally on large and distributed teams - Implementing an effective configuration management strategy - Automating acceptance testing, from analysis to implementation - Testing capacity and other non-functional requirements - Implementing continuous deployment and zero-downtime releases - Managing infrastructure, data, components and dependencies - Navigating risk management, compliance, and auditing Whether you're a developer, systems administrator, tester, or manager, this book will help your organization move from idea to release faster than ever--so you can deliver value to your business rapidly and reliably.
Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It
Mike Monteiro - 2019
Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” iniative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all.Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name.This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments
Stefan H. Thomke - 2020
Whether it's improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. This is especially true in the online world, where predicting customer behavior is virtually impossible.Managers can, however, discover whether a new product, service, or business model will fail or succeed--by subjecting it to rigorous experimentation. Think about it. A pharmaceutical company would never introduce a new drug without first conducting a round of experiments based on established scientific protocols. Yet that's essentially what many companies do when they roll out new products and services.As Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke shows in this eye-opening and essential book, the "best guess" approach to innovation is changing fast. There are now leading companies that conduct more than ten thousand online controlled experiments annually, engaging millions of users. These organizations have discovered that an "experiment with everything" approach has a big payoff, giving them a considerable competitive advantage.How can you do this at your company? Leaders and managers need to create an "experimentation organization" that masters the science of testing and puts the discipline of experimentation at the center of the innovation process. It used to take companies years to build the infrastructure and develop the expertise to run hundreds of experiments each day. But Thomke shows how, with advances in technology, these capabilities are at the fingertips of almost any business professional. By combining the power of software and the rigor of controlled experiments, today's managers can make better decisions, create better customer experiences, and generate huge financial returns.Filled with engaging and instructive stories of leading experimentation organizations, Experimentation Works will be your guidebook to a truly new way of thinking and innovating.
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
Melissa Perri - 2018
Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs.
In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small.
In five parts, this book explores:
Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent
How to set up a product organization that scales
How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities
How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework
How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Ken Kocienda - 2018
Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.