But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products.As legendary Silicon Valley coach--and coach to the founders of several of today's leading tech companies--Bill Campbell said, "Leadership is about recognizing that there's a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge."The goal of EMPOWERED is to provide you, as a leader of product management, product design, or engineering, with everything you'll need to create just such an environment.As partners at The Silicon Valley Product Group, Marty Cagan and Chris Jones have long worked to reveal the best practices of the most consistently innovative companies in the world. A natural companion to the bestseller INSPIRED, EMPOWERED tackles head-on the reason why most companies fail to truly leverage the potential of their people to innovate: product leadership.The book covers:what it means to be an empowered product team, and how this is different from the "feature teams" used by most companies to build technology products recruiting and coaching the members of product teams, first to competence, and then to reach their potential creating an inspiring product vision along with an insights-driven product strategy translating that strategy into action by empowering teams with specific objectives--problems to solve--rather than features to build redefining the relationship of the product teams to the rest of the company detailing the changes necessary to effectively and successfully transform your organization to truly empowered product teams EMPOWERED puts decades of lessons learned from the best leaders of the top technology companies in your hand as a guide. It shows you how to become the leader your team and company needs to not only survive but thrive.

    With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent--but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation.* Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance * Create a culture where it's "safe" to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes * Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today's knowledge economy* Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization Shed the "yes-men" approach and step into real performance. Fertilize creativity, clarify goals, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, and much more. The Fearless Organization helps you bring about this most critical transformation.

    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.

    In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez addresses a wide range of important "soft" topics, from career and productivity to personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships, all from a developer-centric viewpoint.For most software developers, coding is the fun part. The hard bits are dealing with clients, peers, and managers, staying productive, achieving financial security, keeping yourself in shape, and finding true love. This book is here to help.Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual is a guide to a well-rounded, satisfying life as a technology professional. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez offers advice to developers on important "soft" subjects like career and productivity, personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships. Arranged as a collection of 71 short chapters, this fun-to-read book invites you to dip in wherever you like. A Taking Action section at the end of each chapter shows you how to get quick results. Soft Skills will help make you a better programmer, a more valuable employee, and a happier, healthier person.What's InsideBoost your career by building a personal brandJohn's secret ten-step process for learning quicklyFitness advice to turn your geekiness to your advantageUnique strategies for investment and early retirement

    His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant—or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a colleague from student days—Jonah—to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done.The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC) developed by Eli Goldratt.

      The path to fulfillment, whether at work or at home, is almost never a straight line. Ask anyone who has achieved their biggest goals or who thrives in their relationships, and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who rise to these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility.Emotional agility is a four-step approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. In her more than twenty years of research, Susan David has found that no matter how intelligent, resilient, or creative people are, when they ignore how situations or interactions make them feel, they miss opportunities to gain insight, getting hooked by thoughts, emotions, and habits that prevent them from reaching their full potential. Emotionally agile people experience the same stresses and setbacks as anyone else, but they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small changes that lead to a life of growth.Drawing on her extensive professional research, her international consulting work, and her own experiences growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa and losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can become more emotionally agile and thrive in an uncertain world. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility will help you live your most successful life, whoever you are and whatever you face. Take the FREE Emotional Agility Insights Quiz here: https://bitly.com/ea-quiz

    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.

     They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little . As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it and it's worth doing right .Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we're supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it's easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.

    Now he offers his most important book yet, a guide to making big career changes—by choice or necessity—and escaping the horrible feeling of being trapped in the wrong job.Acuff finds it amazing that people spend more than eighteen years studying and preparing for college, but little or no time honing their careers between graduation and retirement. He offers an empowering tool he calls the Career Savings Account, which will change the way readers think about their skills, relationships, character, and work ethic. He also shows that if you’re on the wrong track, you already have what you need to change it—even if your family and mortgage mean you can’t simply pick up and move for a new opportunity.Throughout the book, Acuff features inspiring and funny true stories—not merely his own, but those of friends who restarted their careers after a layoff, an extended maternity leave, or simply the realization that they were suffering fifty weeks a year just to pay the bills and enjoy two weeks of vacation. Everyone can benefit from Do Over, from new graduates to fiftysomethings and beyond.

    Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.ContentsForewordPrefacePART I: HOW WE WORK1. About the Project1.1 Timeline 51.2 How We Sliced the Elephant 61.3 How We Involved the Customer 72. Structuring the Teams3. Attending the Daily Cocktail Party3.1 First Tier: Feature Team Daily Stand-up3.2 Second Tier: Sync Meetings per Specialty3.3 Third Tier: Project Sync Meeting4. The Project Board4.1 Our Cadences4.2 How We Handle Urgent Issues and Impediments5. Scaling the Kanban Boards6. Tracking the High-Level Goal7. Defining Ready and Done7.1 Ready for Development7.2 Ready for System Test7.3 How This Improved Collaboration 8. Handling Tech Stories8.1 Example 1: System Test Bottleneck8.2 Example 2: Day Before the Release8.3 Example 3: The 7-Meter Class9. Handling Bugs9.1 Continuous System Test9.2 Fix the Bugs Immediately9.3 Why We Limit the Number of Bugs in the Bug Tracker9.4 Visualizing Bugs9.5 Preventing Recurring Bugs10. Continuously Improving the Process10.1 Team Retrospectives10.2 Process Improvement Workshops10.3 Managing the Rate of Change11. Managing Work in Progress11.1 Using WIP Limits11.2 Why WIP Limits Apply Only to Features12. Capturing and Using Process Metrics12.1 Velocity (Features per Week)12.2 Why We Don’t Use Story Points12.3 Cycle Time (Weeks per Feature)12.4 Cumulative Flow12.5 Process Cycle Efficiency13. Planning the Sprint and Release13.1 Backlog Grooming13.2 Selecting the Top Ten Features13.3 Why We Moved Backlog Grooming Out of the Sprint Planning Meeting13.4 Planning the Release14. How We Do Version Control14.1 No Junk on the Trunk14.2 Team Branches14.3 System Test Branch15. Why We Use Only Physical Kanban Boards16. What We Learned16.1 Know Your Goal16.2 Experiment16.3 Embrace Failure16.4 Solve Real Problems16.5 Have Dedicated Change Agents16.6 Involve PeoplePART II: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE TECHNIQUES 17. Agile and Lean in a Nutshell17.1 Agile in a Nutshell17.2 Lean in a Nutshell17.3 Scrum in a Nutshell17.4 XP in a Nutshell17.5 Kanban in a Nutshell18. Reducing the Test Automation Backlog18.1 What to Do About It18.2 How to Improve Test Coverage a Little Bit Each Iteration18.3 Step 1: List Your Test Cases18.4 Step 2: Classify Each Test18.5 Step 3: Sort the List in Priority Order18.6 Step 4: Automate a Few Tests Each Iteration18.7 Does This Solve the Problem?19. Sizing the Backlog with Planning Poker19.1 Estimating Without Planning Poker19.2 Estimating with Planning Poker19.3 Special Cards20. Cause-Effect Diagrams20.1 Solve Problems, Not Symptoms20.2 The Lean Problem-Solving Approach: A3 Thinking20.3 How to Use Cause-Effect Diagrams20.4 Example 1: Long Release Cycle20.5 Example 2: Defects Released to Production20.6 Example 3: Lack of Pair Programming20.7 Example 4: Lots of Problems20.8 Practical Issues: How to Create and Maintain the Diagrams20.9 Pitfalls20.10 Why Use Cause-Effect Diagrams?21. Final WordsA1. Glossary: How We Avoid Buzzword BingoIndex

    We all want to reach our full potential. But too often we find ourselves overwhelmed by the day-to-day. Our big goals get pushed to the back burner--and then, more often than not, they get forgotten. New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt wants readers to know that it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, he thinks that this is the year readers can finally close the gap between reality and their dreams.In Your Best Year Ever, Hyatt shares a powerful, proven, research-driven system for setting and achieving goals. Readers learn how to design their best year ever in just five hours- three simple ways to triple the likelihood of achieving their goals- how to quit-proof their goals- what to do when they feel stuck- and much moreAnyone who is tired of not seeing progress in their personal, intellectual, business, relationship, or financial goals will treasure the field-tested wisdom found in these pages.

    A pocket-sized overview of roles, artifacts and the sprint cycle, adapted from the bestseller The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson

    Combining tools, core principles, and plenty of humor, The Agile Samurai gives you the tools and the attitude to deliver something of value every week, and make rolling software into production a non-event. You’ll see how agile software delivery really works and how to help your team get agile fast, while having fun along the way.

    Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.

    Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.