Book picks similar to
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Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise
Dean Leffingwell - 2010
He draws ideas from three very useful intellectual pools: classical management practices, Agile methods, and lean product development. By combining the strengths of these three approaches, he has produced something that works better than any one in isolation." -From the Foreword by Don Reinertsen, President of Reinertsen & Associates; author of Managing the Design Factory; and leading expert on rapid product development Effective requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for serious application development. Until now, however, requirements and Agile methods have rarely coexisted peacefully. For many enterprises considering Agile approaches, the absence of effective and scalable Agile requirements processes has been a showstopper for Agile adoption. In
Agile Software Requirements,
Dean Leffingwell shows exactly how to create effective requirements in Agile environments. Part I presents the "big picture" of Agile requirements in the enterprise, and describes an overall process model for Agile requirements at the project team, program, and portfolio levels Part II describes a simple and lightweight, yet comprehensive model that Agile project teams can use to manage requirements Part III shows how to develop Agile requirements for complex systems that require the cooperation of multiple teams Part IV guides enterprises in developing Agile requirements for ever-larger "systems of systems," application suites, and product portfolios This book will help you leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements discovery and analysis. You'll find proven solutions you can apply right now-whether you're a software developer or tester, executive, project/program manager, architect, or team leader.
Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management
Scott Berkun - 2001
Each essay distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice, and the new edition now adds more value for leaders and managers of projects everywhere. Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Internet Explorer, and lead program manager for Windows and MSN, Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. Making Things Happen doesn't cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Topics in this new edition include:How to make things happenMaking good decisionsSpecifications and requirementsIdeas and what to do with themHow not to annoy peopleLeadership and trustThe truth about making datesWhat to do when things go wrongComplete with a new forward from the author and a discussion guide for forming reading groups/teams, Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm's reach throughout the life of your project. Coming from the rare perspective of someone who fought difficult battles on Microsoft's biggest projects and taught project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, this is valuable advice indeed. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa
Jonathan Stark - 2010
Jonathan Stark shows you how to leverage your existing web development skills to build native iPhone applications using these technologies." --John Allsopp, author and founder of Web Directions"Jonathan's book is the most comprehensive documentation available for developing web applications for mobile Safari. Not just great tech coverage, this book is an easy read of purely fascinating mobile tidbits in a fun colloquial style. Must have for all PhoneGap developers." -- Brian LeRoux, Nitobi SoftwareIt's a fact: if you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you already have the tools you need to develop your own iPhone apps. With this book, you'll learn how to use these open source web technologies to design and build apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch on the platform of your choice-without using Objective-C or Cocoa.Device-agnostic mobile apps are the wave of the future, and this book shows you how to create one product for several platforms. You'll find guidelines for converting your product into a native iPhone app using the free PhoneGap framework. And you'll learn why releasing your product as a web app first helps you find, fix, and test bugs much faster than if you went straight to the App Store with a product built with Apple's tools.Build iPhone apps with tools you already know how to useLearn how to make an existing website look and behave like an iPhone appAdd native-looking animations to your web app using jQTouchTake advantage of client-side data storage with apps that run even when the iPhone is offlineHook into advanced iPhone features -- including the accelerometer, geolocation, and vibration -- with JavaScriptSubmit your applications to the App Store with XcodeThis book received valuable community input through O'Reilly's Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS). Learn more at http://labs.oreilly.com/ofps.html.
Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics
Thomas Tullis - 2008
They explore each metric, considering best methods for collecting, analyzing, and presenting the data. They provide step-by-step guidance for measuring the usability of any type of product using any type of technology.This book is recommended for usability professionals, developers, programmers, information architects, interaction designers, market researchers, and students in an HCI or HFE program.
Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
Michael Lopp - 2007
Drawing on Lopp's management experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland, this book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other. It is a place full of dysfunctional bright people who are in an incredible hurry to find the next big thing so they can strike it rich and then do it all over again. Among these people are managers, a strange breed of people who through a mystical organizational ritual have been given power over your future and your bank account.Whether you're an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what the heck a manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you.
The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder - 1981
Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
Bill Buxton - 2007
So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideation (getting the right design). Overall, the objective is to build the notion of informed design: molding emerging technology into a form that serves our society and reflects its values.Grounded in both practice and scientific research, Bill Buxton s engaging work aims to spark the imagination while encouraging the use of new techniques, breathing new life into user experience design. Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreamsThorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypes-without the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandonReaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and othersFull of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips that demonstrate the principles and methods"
Designing Bots: Creating Conversational Experiences
Amir Shevat - 2017
In this practical guide, author Amir Shevat shows you how to design and build great conversational experiences and delightful bots that makes people s life more fun and productive.You ll explore several real-world bot examples to understand what works and what doesn t, and learn practical design patterns for your own bot-building toolbox. This book is ideal for beginners and intermediate designers, as well as senior professionals exploring the conversational user experience paradigm. No coding experience or prior knowledge of conversational UI is required.Learn what bots are, and understand bot types and major components that compose a botExplore different use-cases of bots and best practices around these use casesExamine real-life examples and learn from their experienceUnderstand the bot anatomy (Onboarding, Notifications, Conversations, Advance UI controls) and their associated design patternsPrototype your own first bot and experiment with user feedback"
The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
Donald G. Reinertsen - 2009
He explains why invisible and unmanaged queues are the underlying root cause of poor product development performance. He shows why these queues form and how they undermine the speed, quality, and efficiency in product development.
Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics
Nathan Yau - 2011
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could actually visualize data in such a way that we could maximize its potential and tell a story in a clear, concise manner? Thanks to the creative genius of Nathan Yau, we can. With this full-color book, data visualization guru and author Nathan Yau uses step-by-step tutorials to show you how to visualize and tell stories with data. He explains how to gather, parse, and format data and then design high quality graphics that help you explore and present patterns, outliers, and relationships.Presents a unique approach to visualizing and telling stories with data, from a data visualization expert and the creator of flowingdata.com, Nathan Yau Offers step-by-step tutorials and practical design tips for creating statistical graphics, geographical maps, and information design to find meaning in the numbers Details tools that can be used to visualize data-native graphics for the Web, such as ActionScript, Flash libraries, PHP, and JavaScript and tools to design graphics for print, such as R and Illustrator Contains numerous examples and descriptions of patterns and outliers and explains how to show them Visualize This demonstrates how to explain data visually so that you can present your information in a way that is easy to understand and appealing.
Functional Thinking
Neal Ford - 2014
This practical guide from renowned software architect Neal Ford helps you transition from a Java-writing imperative programmer to a functional programmer, using Java, Clojure, and Scala as examples.Rather than focus on specific language features, Functional Thinking looks at a variety of common practices in OOP languages and then shows you how to solve the same problems with a functional language. For instance, you know how to achieve code-reuse in Java via mechanisms such as inheritance and polymorphism. Code reuse is also possible in functional languages, using high-order functions, composition, and multi-methods.Ford encourages you to value results over steps, so you can begin to think like a functional programmer. Expect your mind to be bent, but you’ll finish with a much better understanding of both the syntax and semantics of functional languages.
The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. - 2010
But what do we really know about the design process? What leads to effective, elegant designs? The Design of Design addresses these questions. These new essays by Fred Brooks contain extraordinary insights for designers in every discipline. Brooks pinpoints constants inherent in all design projects and uncovers processes and patterns likely to lead to excellence. Drawing on conversations with dozens of exceptional designers, as well as his own experiences in several design domains, Brooks observes that bold design decisions lead to better outcomes. The author tracks the evolution of the design process, treats collaborative and distributed design, and illuminates what makes a truly great designer. He examines the nuts and bolts of design processes, including budget constraints of many kinds, aesthetics, design empiricism, and tools, and grounds this discussion in his own real-world examples--case studies ranging from home construction to IBM's Operating System/360. Throughout, Brooks reveals keys to success that every designer, design project manager, and design researcher should know.
The Passionate Programmer
Chad Fowler - 2009
In this book, you'll learn how to become an entrepreneur, driving your career in the direction of your choosing. You'll learn how to build your software development career step by step, following the same path that you would follow if you were building, marketing, and selling a product. After all, your skills themselves are a product. The choices you make about which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge itself--don't let those choices be accidental. We'll walk through all aspects of the decision-making process, so you can ensure that you're investing your time and energy in the right areas. You'll develop a structured plan for keeping your mind engaged and your skills fresh. You'll learn how to assess your skills in terms of where they fit on the value chain, driving you away from commodity skills and toward those that are in high demand. Through a mix of high-level, thought-provoking essays and tactical "Act on It" sections, you will come away with concrete plans you can put into action immediately. You'll also get a chance to read the perspectives of several highly successful members of our industry from a variety of career paths. As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you're selling, nobody will buy. We'll walk through the often-neglected world of marketing, and you'll create a plan to market yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general. Above all, you'll see how you can set the direction of your career, leading to a more fulfilling and remarkable professional life.
Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
Scott Murray - 2013
It’s easy and fun with this practical, hands-on introduction. Author Scott Murray teaches you the fundamental concepts and methods of D3, a JavaScript library that lets you express data visually in a web browser. Along the way, you’ll expand your web programming skills, using tools such as HTML and JavaScript.This step-by-step guide is ideal whether you’re a designer or visual artist with no programming experience, a reporter exploring the new frontier of data journalism, or anyone who wants to visualize and share data.Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SVG basicsDynamically generate web page elements from your data—and choose visual encoding rules to style themCreate bar charts, scatter plots, pie charts, stacked bar charts, and force-directed layoutsUse smooth, animated transitions to show changes in your dataIntroduce interactivity to help users explore data through different viewsCreate customized geographic maps with dataExplore hands-on with downloadable code and over 100 examples
UML 2 and the Unified Process: Practical Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
Jim Arlow - 2001
Even for people not working with the Unified Process, the book is still of great use. UML 2 and the Unified Process, Second Edition is a must-read for every UML 2 beginner and a helpful guide and reference for the experienced practitioner."--Roland Leibundgut, Technical Director, Zuehlke Engineering Ltd."This book is a good starting point for organizations and individuals who are adopting UP and need to understand how to provide visualization of the different aspects needed to satisfy it. "--Eric Naiburg, Market Manager, Desktop Products, IBM Rational SoftwareThis thoroughly revised edition provides an indispensable and practical guide to the complex process of object-oriented analysis and design using UML 2. It describes how the process of OO analysis and design fits into the software development lifecycle as defined by the Unified Process (UP). UML 2 and the Unified Process contains a wealth of practical, powerful, and useful techniques that you can apply immediately. As you progress through the text, you will learn OO analysis and design techniques, UML syntax and semantics, and the relevant aspects of the UP. The book provides you with an accurate and succinct summary of both UML and UP from the point of view of the OO analyst and designer.This book providesChapter roadmaps, detailed diagrams, and margin notes allowing you to focus on your needs Outline summaries for each chapter, making it ideal for revision, and a comprehensive index that can be used as a reference New to this edition:Completely revised and updated for UML 2 syntax Easy to understand explanations of the new UML 2 semantics More real-world examples A new section on the Object Constraint Language (OCL) Introductory material on the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) The accompanying website providesA complete example of a simple e-commerce system Open source tools for requirements engineering and use case modeling Industrial-strength UML course materials based on the book