You can think of this problem as a variant of the well known "telephone game", where some trivial rumor is repeated from one person to the next until it has become distorted beyond recognition and blown up out of all proportion.Unfortunately, the objects of this telephone game are generally considered cornerstone truths of the discipline, to the point that their acceptance now seems to hinder further progress.In this short ebook, we will take a look at some of those "ground truths": the claimed 10x variation in productivity between developers; the "software crisis"; the cost-of-change curve; the "cone of uncertainty"; and more. We'll hone our scholarship skills by looking up the original source for these ideas and taking a deep dive in the history of their development. We'll assess the real weight of the evidence behind these ideas.And we'll confront the scary prospect of moving the state of the art forward in a discipline that has had the ground kicked from under it.

    Reputations are dying. Don't let it happen to your company, your team, or your family. You need to turn this potential liability into leadership, and you need to start today. Learn the art and science behind why digital reputations are determining: business winners and losers, your child's future, effective vs. ineffective CEOs & school teachers, your team's culture, church congregation sizes, your next job, everything..

    This book provides up-to-date information on how good project, program, and portfolio management can help you achieve organizational success. It includes over 50 samples of tools and techniques applied to one large project, and is suitable for all majors, including business, engineering, healthcare, and more.

    We live in a transformative time. The digital age has given us unlimited access to information and affected all our traditional business relationships – from how we hire and manage, to how we communicate with our current and would-be customers. Innovation continues to create opportunities for emerging products and services we never thought possible. With all the excitement of our time, comes confusion and fear for many businesses. Change can be daunting, and never have we lived in a time where change came so quickly. This is the age of disruption – it's fast-paced, far-reaching and is forever changing how we operate, create, connect, and market. It's easy to see why brand heads are spinning. Businesses are suffering from 'the next big thing' and we're here to help you find the cure. UnBranding is about focus – it's about seeing that within these new strategies, technologies and frameworks fighting for our attention, lay the tried and true tenants of good business – because innovation is nothing but a bright and shiny new toy, unless it actually works. UnBranding is here to remind you that you can't fix rude staff, mediocre products and a poor brand reputation with a fancy new app. We are going to learn from 100 branding stories that will challenge your assumptions about business today and teach valuable, actionable lessons. It's not about going backwards, it's about moving forward with purpose, getting back to the core of good branding while continuing to innovate and improve without leaving your values behind. Some topics will include: Growing and maintaining your brand voice through the noise How to focus on the right tools for your business, for the right reasons Maintaining trust, consistency and connection through customer service and community The most important question to ask yourself before innovation The importance of personal branding in the digital age How to successful navigate feedback and reviews It's time for a reality check. It's time to solve problems, create connections, and provide value rather than rush strategy just to make headlines. UnBranding gives you the guidance you need to navigate the age of disruption and succeed in business today.

    

    Mastering large-scale software delivery will define the economic landscape of the 21st century, just as mass production defined the landscape in the 20th. Unfortunately, business and technology leaders outside of the tech giants are woefully ill-equipped to solve the problems posed by digital transformation. A new approach is needed.In Project to Product, value stream network pioneer and technology leader Dr. Mik Kersten introduces the Flow Framework. This new way of building an infrastructure for innovation will change the way enterprises think about software delivery, enabling every organization the opportunity to win a portion of the $18.5 trillion (IDC) that will be created annually through better software delivery.Project to Product provides leaders the missing framework needed to create the technology equivalent of an advanced manufacturing line, across thousands of IT professionals, and enables optimizing value creation across the entire organization. This book is ideal for C-suite leadership and IT management at every level.

    Think about a company. Engineers build the product. Designers make sure it has a great user experience and looks good. Marketing makes sure customers know about the product. Sales get potential customers to open their wallets to buy the product. What more does a company need? What does a product manager do? Based upon Product School’s curriculum, which has helped thousands of students become great product managers, The Product Book answers that question. Filled with practical advice, best practices, and expert tips, this book is here to help you succeed! Product School offers product management classes taught by real-world product managers, working at renowned tech companies like Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, Netflix and more. The classes are designed to fit into your work schedule, and the campuses are conveniently located in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

    Unfortunately, reliable guidance on Agile management has been scarce indeed. Now, leading Agile manager Jurgen Appelo fills that gap, introducing a realistic approach to leading, managing, and growing your Agile team or organization. Writing for current managers and developers moving into management, Appelo shares insights that are grounded in modern complex systems theory, reflecting the intense complexity of modern software development. Appelo's Management 3.0 model recognizes that today's organizations are living, networked systems; and that management is primarily about people and relationships. Management 3.0 doesn't offer mere checklists or prescriptions to follow slavishly; rather, it deepens your understanding of how organizations and Agile teams work and gives you tools to solve your own problems. Drawing on his extensive experience as an Agile manager, the author identifies the most important practices of Agile management and helps you improve each of them. Coverage includes - Getting beyond "Management 1.0" control and "Management 2.0" fads - Understanding how complexity affects your organization - Keeping your people active, creative, innovative, and motivated - Giving teams the care and authority they need to grow on their own - Defining boundaries so teams can succeed in alignment with business goals - Sowing the seeds for a culture of software craftsmanship - Crafting an organizational network that promotes success - Implementing continuous improvement that actually works Thoroughly pragmatic-and never trendy-Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 helps you bring greater agility to any software organization, team, or project.

    It breaks down the 5 stages of the service lifecycle into digestible chunks, helping you to ensure that customers receive the best possible IT experience. Whether readers need to identify their customers' needs, design and implement a new IT service, or monitor and improve an existing service, this official guide provides a support framework for IT-related activities and the interactions of IT technical personnel with business customers and users.Understanding how ITIL can help you Getting to grips with ITIL processes and the service lifecycle Implementing ITIL into your day to day work Learn key skills in planning and carrying out design and implementation projects

    The Agile and Scrum software development method allows creation of the game–changing software you need to grow your business - in 30 days or less. Projects that use it are three times more successful than those that don′t, and the productivity gain versus traditional "waterfall" methods has been over 100 percent on many projects.For the business manager, the entrepreneur, or IT manager, Software in 30 Days explains how this unorthodox process works, how to get started, and how to succeed. Learn powerful concepts such as the "art of the possible," "bottom–up intelligence," and why it′s good to fail early. With simple but profound shifts in thinking, you will be able to control risk, manage projects, and deliver your best work possible, faster and cheaper than ever before.

    Project Management For Dummies, Second Edition introduces you to the principles of successful project management and shows you how to motivate any team to gain maximum productivity. You'll find out how to:Define your project and what you intend to accomplish Identify project stakeholders and their expectations Develop a project plan Establish project schedules and timetables Determine which skill sets and resources the project requires Choose team members and define their roles Launch you project and track its progress Encourage peak performance Conclude your project successfully Complete with helpful tips on delegating, shortening schedules, and optimizing your own performance Project Management for Dummies, help you get your project, and your career, off the ground in no time.

    If you are an organization that really needs to start grokking UX this book is also for you. " -- Chris Bernard, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable Web site or application--one that's easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there's a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest Web technologies or design trends: It takes diplomacy, project management skills, and business savvy. That's where this book comes in. Authors Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler show you how to integrate UX principles into your project from start to finish. - Understand the various roles in UX design, identify stakeholders, and enlist their support- Obtain consensus from your team on project objectives- Define the scope of your project and avoid mission creep- Conduct user research and document your findings- Understand and communicate user behavior with personas- Design and prototype your application or site- Make your product findable with search engine optimization- Plan for development, product rollout, and ongoing quality assurance

    But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams.Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

    Start standing out. Whether in school, factories, or corporate offices, people are in a mad rush to the middle, going about their business and fitting in. The problem is, while you may feel as if you’re doing your own thing, you’re not—you’re doing what’s expected of you. To stand out, take whatever you think is normal, and do the exact opposite. In Find Your Yellow Tux, Jesse Cole, in-demand speaker and baseball ringleader, shares how you can achieve amazing things by doing the unexpected. Using examples from his life and the lives of his heroes—P. T. Barnum, Walt Disney, and MLB owner Bill Veeck—Cole shows how to reinvigorate your goals, reignite your passions, and excel in business and beyond. The time to break the mold is now—with Find Your Yellow Tux, you'll discover how to find joy and success in everything you do.

    You will learn:- How to get your website on the first page of Google- How to get your website showing up multiple times on the first page (one of my websites shows up 6 in the first 7 results!!)- The 3 'Dirty Secrets' that expensive SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Experts don't want you to know- What you can do for the price of 2 ½ cups of coffee that could have your website ranking top in as little as a day (I have done exactly this and I’ll show you how)- The small things you can do to make a BIG difference- How to analyse your online competition and find their weaknesses- How to pull off the famous ‘Google Leapfrog’- What the recent Google changes mean for people using pre-April 2012 strategies – and it’s not good news!- How to make people click on your website even if it shows up below your competitors!- How to avoid the deadly mistakes that can lead to Google removing your site from the listings- How to survive and thrive post-PenguinWhat most people don't understand is that once you know what to do, it's actually extremely straightforward to rank highly in Google. But there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there.Tim Kitchen is a Search Engine ranking expert and online business owner currently personally in charge of SEO for over 50 businesses as well as his own businesses in some incredibly competitive markets. He also regularly teaches SEO to more than 2,000 small business owners through his books, courses and videos.In this updated version of the book he shares everything he has learnt from the past 7 years of getting websites to the top of Google.