By 2008, it was bust. The Irish government's hopeless attempts to save Anglo have led the state to ruin - culminating in a punitive IMF bailout in late 2010 and threatening the future of the euro. Now, for the first time, the full story of the bank the Sunday Times described as 'a building society on crack' is being told - by the journalist who has led the way in coverage of Anglo and its many secrets. Drawing on his unmatched sources in and around Anglo, Simon Carswell of the Irish Times shows how the business model that brought Anglo twenty years of spectacular growth was also at the heart of its - and Ireland's - downfall. He paints a vivid and disturbing picture of life inside Anglo - the credit committee meetings, the lightning-quick negotiations with property developers, the culture of lavish entertainment - and of the men who presided over its dizzying rise and fall: Sean FitzPatrick, David Drumm, Willie McAteer and many others. This is not only the first full account of the Anglo disaster; it will also be the definitive one.

     ­Written by successful product manager Marc Abraham, My Product Management Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to developing a physical or digital product that consumers love. Here’s a sample of what you’ll find within these pages: Strategies for determining what customers want—even when they don’t know themselves Clear suggestions for developing both physical and digital products Effective methods to constantly iterate a product or feature Containing wisdom from Abraham’s popular blog, this book explores product management from every angle, including consumer analysis, personnel management, and product evolution. Whether you’re developing a product for a small start-up or a multinational corporation, this book will prove invaluable.

    Mainstream agile approaches that are indeed suitable for small projects require significant tailoring for larger, complex enterprise projects. In "Disciplined Agile Delivery," Scott W. Ambler and Mark Lines introduce IBM's breakthrough Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework, which describes how to do this tailoring. DAD applies a more disciplined approach to agile development by acknowledging and dealing with the realities and complexities of a portfolio of interdependent program initiatives. Ambler and Lines show how to extend Scrum with supplementary agile and lean strategies from Agile Modeling (AM), Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, Unified Process (UP), and other proven methods to provide a hybrid approach that is adaptable to your organization's unique needs. They candidly describe what practices work best, why they work, what the trade-offs are, and when to consider alternatives, all within the context of your situation. "Disciplined Agile Delivery "addresses agile practices across the entire lifecycle, from requirements, architecture, and development to delivery and governance. The authors show how these best-practice techniques fit together in an end-to-end process for successfully delivering large, complex systems--from project initiation through delivery. Coverage includesScaling agile for mission-critical enterprise endeavorsAvoiding mistakes that drive poorly run agile projects to chaosEffectively initiating an agile projectTransitioning as an individual to agileIncrementally building consumable solutionsDeploying agile solutions into complex production environmentsLeveraging DevOps, architecture, and other enterprise disciplinesAdapting your governance strategy for agile projects Based on facts, research, and extensive experience, this book will be an indispensable resource for every enterprise software leader and practitioner--whether they're seeking to optimize their existing agile/Scrum process or improve the agility of an iterative process.

    And you'll be well-equipped to achieve your dreams!

    He describes a broad range of agile product management practices, including making agile product discovery work, taking advantage of emergent requirements, creating the minimal marketable product, leveraging early customer feedback, and working closely with the development team. Benefitting from Pichler's extensive experience, you'll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management and how to avoid and overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face. Coverage includesUnderstanding the product owner's role: what product owners do, how they do it, and the surprising implicationsEnvisioning the product: creating a compelling product vision to galvanize and guide the team and stakeholdersGrooming the product backlog: managing the product backlog effectively even for the most complex productsPlanning the release: bringing clarity to scheduling, budgeting, and functionality decisionsCollaborating in sprint meetings: understanding the product owner's role in sprint meetings, including the dos and don'tsTransitioning into product ownership: succeeding as a product owner and establishing the role in the enterprise This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner, or expects to do so, as well as executives and coaches interested in establishing agile product management.

    It already drives most of the world’s top technology companies. And now it’s starting to spread to every domain where leaders wrestle with complex projects. If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling – explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago. The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that would have global impact. In this book you’ll journey to Scrum’s front lines where Jeff’s system of deep accountability, team interaction, and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World, and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores. Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology, devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.

    The key to achieving HYPERGROWTH is being customer-driven. So if you’re ready to start putting your customers first, keep reading... What You’ll Learn: A New Approach to Product Management and Developing SaaS Products People Love Today, there’s no excuse for not communicating with customers on a daily basis. Messaging has exploded, new generations are focused on 1:1 communication by default, and artificial intelligence is finally coming so we can deliver 1:1 at scale. So why would you build a product, or a company, without leaning into the advantages of that ecosystem? In his new book, HYPERGROWTH, serial entrepreneur and Drift co-founder/CEO David Cancel shares a modern approach for building products and structuring teams that makes customer communication a central priority. The book tells the story of how Cancel’s customer-driven approach started out as a test with a product team (Performable), transformed an entire organization (HubSpot), and sparked a new movement (Drift). What’s Inside: Practical Advice and Frameworks for Becoming Customer-Driven and Growing Your Business Responsive Development (RD): a new approach to building products that adds the customer back into the equation The Burndown Framework: a framework for implementing Responsive Development that’s faster and more flexible than Agile. The Three-Person Team: the customer-driven way to structure engineering teams. Each team consists of a tech lead who manages two other engineers. Getting Rid of Roadmaps: through building a culture of transparency and accountability and working closely with internal customers, you can release product updates more rapidly and iteratively. The Spotlight Framework: a framework for helping you focus on the right parts of customer feedback so you can take the appropriate next steps. The framework breaks feedback down into three main categories: user experience issues, product marketing issues, and positioning issues. Who This Book Is For: Entrepreneurs, Startup Founders, Product Managers, Product Teams, Marketing Teams … Entire Companies! Every part of your business can benefit from being customer-driven. With the rise of SaaS and the on-demand economy, customer expectations have changed. Customers expect their voices to be heard. They find value in being part of a community, and being part of that journey of creating the product. So stop running your business like we’re still living in the 2000s. It’s time to take a customer-driven approach. Here’s what people are saying about the book: “David Cancel is one of the best when it comes to building products that customers love. And now he’s sharing his wisdom and writing the book explaining how he does it. This is a must read for any entrepreneur or business owner.” -MARK ROBERGE Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School, Former SVP of Sale and Services at HubSpot ”When it comes to building business software, there’s no one better than David Cancel, and I saw fi

    

    This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science." With these words, the authors begin a detailed analysis of one of the most controversial topics of the day. The authors make a compelling case against claims of a scientific consensus. The purported proof of such a consensus consists of sloppy research by nonscientists, college students, and a highly partisan Australian blogger. Surveys of climate scientists, even those heavily biased in favor of climate alarmism, find extensive disagreement on the underlying science and doubts about its reliability. The authors point to four reasons why scientists disagree about global warming: a conflict among scientists in different and often competing disciplines; fundamental scientific uncertainties concerning how the global climate responds to the human presence; failure of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide objective guidance to the complex science; and bias among researchers. The authors offer a succinct summary of the real science of climate change based on their previously published comprehensive review of climate science in a volume titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. They recommend that policymakers resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of the IPCC to claim to speak for climate science. More than 50,000 copies of the first edition were sold or given away in five months to elected officials, civic and business leaders, scientists, and other opinion leaders. The response from the science community and experts on climate change has been overwhelmingly positive. To meet demand for more copies, we have produced this second revised edition. Changes include a foreword by Marita Noon, at the time executive director of Energy Makes America Great, Inc. Some of the discussion in Chapter 1 has been revised and expanded thanks to feedback from readers of the first edition. Graphs in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are now full color, and new graphs have been added.

    The result is a tremendous amount of time and money wasted due to wrong assumptions, lack of focus, poor communication of objectives, lack of understanding and misalignment with overall goals. There has to be a better way to deliver!This handbook is a practical guide to impact mapping, a simple yet incredibly effective method for collaborative strategic planning that helps organisations make an impact with software. Impact mapping helps to create better plans and roadmaps that ensure alignment of business and delivery, and are easily adaptable to change. Impact mapping fits nicely into several current trends in software product management and release planning, including goal-oriented requirements engineering, frequent iterative delivery, agile and lean software methods, lean startup product development cycles, and design thinking.Who is this book for?The primary audience of this book are senior people involved in building software products or delivering software projects, from both business and delivery sides. This includes business sponsors and those whose responsibilities include product ownership, project oversight or portfolio management, architecture, business analysis, quality improvement and assurance and delivery. - Business people assigned to software projects will learn how to communicate their ideas better.- Senior product or project sponsors will learn how to communicate their assumptions more effectively to delivery teams, how to engage delivery teams to make better strategic decisions, and how to manage their project portfolio more effectively.- Delivery teams that are already working under the umbrella of agile or lean delivery methods, and more recently lean startup ideas, will learn how to better focus deliverables and engage business sponsors and users.- Delivery teams moving to agile or lean delivery methods will get ideas on how to address some common issues with scaling these practices, such as creating a big picture view, splitting work into small chunks that still have business value and reporting progress more meaningfully.About the authorGojko Adzic is a strategic software delivery consultant who works with ambitious teams to improve the quality of their software products and processes. Gojko won the 2012 Jolt Award for the best book, was voted by peers as the most influential agile testing professional in 2011, and his blog won the UK Agile Award for the best online publication in 2010. To get in touch, write to gojko@neuri.co.uk or visit http://gojko.net.

    Patrick Collins, an internationally recognized expert on the subject, offers an original, comprehensive guide to maximizing negotiation skills, whether in a one-on-one encounter or a larger, more formal negotiating session.Collins explains what negotiation is and isn’t (“negotiation is not confrontation”) and discusses ways to overcome the fear of negotiation, strategies for gaining the upper hand by manipulating the environment, and tactics tailored to negotiation type. What he offers is much more than just a guide to “magic words” or a collection of case studies; Collins provides a hard-working handbook on assessing situations and pinpointing the appropriate techniques for any given circumstance. There’s great real-life advice, including details on how to negotiate at restaurants and hotels. The tips are often surprisingly, almost shockingly simple and logical—such as the suggestion to get in line behind a belligerent customer to boost your own chances for success. Readers will come away with a set of “guerrilla negotiating” tactics, and a better understanding of:• when to continue talking and when to walk away• how to identify words that sabotage your best efforts• how to identify cultural customs that will smooth the process• how to bluff for maximum effectivenessEach chapter concludes with “key thoughts” that summarize the main lessons in the preceding pages.Viewing negotiation as both science and art, Collins will help executives, managers, and almost anyone master the skills to have the upper hand in any situation.

    Establishing and maintaining processes that greatly reduce the chances of project failure is paramount to achieving the competitive edge your company seeks."The Handbook of Program Management" gives program managers at all levels the techniques to put such processes in place as well as consistently integrate new technology and new people into these processes, thus producing superior products and services. Dr. James Brown, an internationally recognized authority in program and project management, explains how to strike a crucial balance between operations and project implementations-the precise point where you must nurture repeatable success.Outlining the differences between the roles of program and project managers, Dr. Brown provides proven principles for establishing a successful program management culture that is supported by enthusiastic personnel and stakeholders. He shows you how to develop the attributes of an effective program manager, from having a vision and strategy for long-term improvement to assessing people and building relationships to analyzing a myriad of means for accomplishing program objectives. You'll see how to Readily adapt to changing business conditions and turn chaos into clarity Mentor and coach project managers in terms of stakeholder management Make strategic program process decisions that positively impact your culture Build strong teams on multiple levels Plan an effective program execution Manage risk in an environment of uncertaintyYou'll also learn the keys to proper portfolio management and how to capitalize on positive program outcomes. Nowhere else will you find such comprehensive, authoritative information on meeting the new standards of program management--Dr. Brown's "The Handbook of Project Management" is the definitive resource.

    Unfortunately, change is extraordinarily difficult, and most attempts to initiate and sustain it fail. In It Starts with One, J. Stewart Black and Hal B Gregersen identify the core problem: changing individuals and the "mental maps" inside their heads must happen before you can change the organization. Just as actual maps guide people's footsteps, mental maps guide daily behavior. Successful strategic change for the organization is all about changing individual mental maps and behaviors first, because they are the organization.To change organizations, you must break through your own brain barrier -- and help those around you do the same. One step at a time, It Starts with One shows how to do that: how to create new destinations, and new, more inspiring effective paths to sustainable change. Black and Gregersen systematically identify the brain barriers that stand in your way: failure to see, failure to move, and failure to finish. Drawing on their extensive experience consulting with world-class organizations, they offer integrated tools, strategies, and solutions for overcoming each of these obstacles. This edition offers even more effective tools, more guidance on leading change in globalizing environments, and more insight into changing your own mental maps...liberating yourself to transform your entire organization.Seventy percent of organizations that seek strategic change fail. Organizations can't change because individuals don't change. Individuals don't change because powerful mental maps stand in their way. This book offers a powerful, start-to-finish strategy for helping people redraw their mental maps -- and unleash their power to deliver superior, sustained strategic change. Thoroughly updated with new techniques, case studies, and examples, this book offers even more valuable insights for today's leaders and managers.

    Leading Scrum coach and trainer Kenny Rubin illuminates the values, principles, and practices of Scrum, and describes flexible, proven approaches that can help you implement it far more effectively. Whether you are new to Scrum or years into your use, this book will introduce, clarify, and deepen your Scrum knowledge at the team, product, and portfolio levels. Drawing from Rubin's experience helping hundreds of organizations succeed with Scrum, this book provides easy-to-digest descriptions enhanced by more than two hundred illustrations based on an entirely new visual icon language for describing Scrum's roles, artifacts, and activities. Essential Scrum will provide every team member, manager, and executive with a common understanding of Scrum, a shared vocabulary they can use in applying it, and practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from it.

    Discover the mindsets of the best, install the rituals of the icons, run the habits of the heroes and massive improvements will be yours for the taking. In The Little Black Book of stunning success, Robin Sharma - one of the true masters of leadership + elite performance on the planet - shares the potent insights that have helped so many people just like you do legendary work, live remarkable lives and lift everyone around them in the process. If you're truly ready to live your dreams, this book is your fuel. Dream. Dare. Lead. Learn. Craft. Create. Produce. Perfect. Iterate. Optimize. Inspire. Impact. Win. Repeat. Push. Rest. Love. Live.