The principal enhancement in Java 8 was the addition of functional programming constructs to Java's object-oriented roots. Java 7, 8, and 9 also introduced language features, such as the try-with-resources statement, the diamond operator for generic types, default and static methods in interfaces, the @SafeVarargs annotation, and modules. New library features include pervasive use of functional interfaces and streams, the java.time package for manipulating dates and times, and numerous minor enhancements such as convenience factory methods for collections. In this new edition of Effective Java, Bloch updates the work to take advantage of these new language and library features, and provides specific best practices for their use. Java's increased support for multiple paradigms increases the need for best-practices advice, and this book delivers. As in previous editions, each chapter consists of several "items," each presented in the form of a short, standalone essay that provides specific advice, insight into Java platform subtleties, and updated code examples. The comprehensive descriptions and explanations for each item illuminate what to do, what not to do, and why. Coverage includes:Updated techniques and best practices on classic topics, including objects, classes, methods, libraries, and generics How to avoid the traps and pitfalls of commonly misunderstood subtleties of the platform Focus on the language and its most fundamental libraries, such as java.lang and java.util

    Indeed, that's what computers are for. You can enlist your own computer to automate all of your project's repetitive tasks, ranging from individual builds and running unit tests through to full product release, customer deployment, and monitoring the system.Many teams try to do these tasks by hand. That's usually a really bad idea: people just aren't as good at repetitive tasks as machines. You run the risk of doing it differently the one time it matters, on one machine but not another, or doing it just plain wrong. But the computer can do these tasks for you the same way, time after time, without bothering you. You can transform these labor-intensive, boring and potentially risky chores into automatic, background processes that just work.In this eagerly anticipated book, you'll find a variety of popular, open-source tools to help automate your project. With this book, you will learn: How to make your build processes accurate, reliable, fast, and easy. How to build complex systems at the touch of a button. How to build, test, and release software automatically, with no human intervention. Technologies and tools available for automation: which to use and when. Tricks and tips from the masters (do you know how to have your cell phone tell you that your build just failed?) You'll find easy-to-implement recipes to automate your Java project, using the same popular style as the rest of our Jolt Productivity Award-winning Starter Kit books. Armed with plenty of examples and concrete, pragmatic advice, you'll find it's easy to get started and reap the benefits of modern software development. You can begin to enjoy pragmatic, automatic, unattended software production that's reliable and accurate every time.

    Think about how many times you have been asked that question. How many times have you ever actually been right?We can debate all we want whether this is a fair question to ask given the tremendous amount of uncertainty in knowledge work, but the truth of the matter is that our customers are going to inquire about completion time whether we like it or not. Which means we need to come up with an accurate way to answer them. The problem is that the forecasting tools that we currently utilize have made us ill-equipped to provide accurate answers to reasonable customer questions. Until now.

    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

    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

    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.

    It contains a collection of eye-openers that is a treasure chest for pioneers of new organizational ideas, A fantastic toolbox for use in future missions!"--Lise B. Hvatum, product development manager, Schlumberger"If you have need of changing your organization, and especially of introducing new techniques, then you want to understand what is in this book. It will help you avoid common pitfalls that doom many such projects and will show you a clear path to success. The techniques are derived from the experience of many individuals and organizations. Many are also fun to apply. This stuff is really cool--and really hot."--Joseph Bergin, professor of computer science, Pace University, New York"If change is the only guarantee in life, why is it so hard to do? As this book points out, people are not so much resistant to change itself as they are to being changed. Mary Lynn and Linda have successfully used the pattern form to capture and present the recurring lessons of successful change efforts and have placed a powerful knowledge resource in the hands of their readers."--Alan O'Callaghan, researcher, Software Technology Research Laboratory, De Montfort University, United Kingdom"The most difficult part of absorbing patterns, or any technology, into an organization is overcoming the people issues. The patterns in this book are the documentation of having gone through that experience, giving those that dare push the envelope a head start at success."--David E. DeLano, IBM Pervasive Computing"If you have ever wondered how you could possibly foster any cultural changes in your organization, in this book you will find a lot of concrete advice for doing so. I recommend that everyone read this book who has a vast interest in keeping his or her organization flexible and open for cultural change."--Jutta Eckstein, Independent Consultant, Objects In Action Author of "Agile Software Development in the Large"48 Patterns for Driving and Sustaining Change in Your OrganizationChange. It's brutally tough to initiate, even harder to sustain. It takes too long. People resist it.But without it, organizations lose their competitive edge. Fortunately, you can succeed at making change. In "Fearless Change, " Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising illuminate 48 proven techniques, or patterns, for implementing change in organizations or teams of all sizes, and show you exactly how to use them successfully.Find out how toUnderstand the forces in your organization that drive and retard changePlant the seeds of changeDrive participation and buy-in, from start to finishChoose an "official skeptic" to sharpen your thinkingMake your changes appear less threateningFind the right timing and the best teaching momentsSustain your momentumOvercome adversity and celebrate successInspired by the "pattern languages" that are transforming fields from software to architecture, the authors illuminate patterns for every stage of the change process: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. These flexible patterns draw on the experiences of hundreds of leaders. They offer powerful insight into change-agent behavior, organizational culture, and the roles of every participant.Best of all, they're easy to use--"and they work!"

    Kanban leverages visual management techniques to involve stakeholders and to facilitate understanding of how the work works. Through limiting the amount of work in process, and by focusing on finishing that work as soon as possible, kanban helps you to adjust demand to capacity, to reduce lead times and to create a driver for continuous improvement.Kanban in Action is a down-to-earth, no-frills, get-to-know-the-ropes introduction to kanban. It's based on the real-world experience and observations from two kanban coaches who have introduced this process to dozens of teams. In this book, you'll discover basic but powerful techniques on how to visualize and track work, how to construct a kanban board, how to visualize queues and bottlenecks, and much much more. You'll learn the principles of why kanban works as well as nitty-gritty details like how to use different color stickies to help you organize and track your work items.

    The book details agile principles, roles, managerial practices, technical practices and artifacts, offering a complete review that will help readers master all the important agile ideas.

    To grow professionally, you also need soft skills and effective learning techniques. Honing those skills is what this book is all about. Authors Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye have cataloged dozens of behavior patterns to help you perfect essential aspects of your craft. Compiled from years of research, many interviews, and feedback from O'Reilly's online forum, these patterns address difficult situations that programmers, administrators, and DBAs face every day. And it's not just about financial success. Apprenticeship Patterns also approaches software development as a means to personal fulfillment. Discover how this book can help you make the best of both your life and your career. Solutions to some common obstacles that this book explores in-depth include:Burned out at work? "Nurture Your Passion" by finding a pet project to rediscover the joy of problem solving.Feeling overwhelmed by new information? Re-explore familiar territory by building something you've built before, then use "Retreat into Competence" to move forward again.Stuck in your learning? Seek a team of experienced and talented developers with whom you can "Be the Worst" for a while. "Brilliant stuff! Reading this book was like being in a time machine that pulled me back to those key learning moments in my career as a professional software developer and, instead of having to learn best practices the hard way, I had a guru sitting on my shoulder guiding me every step towards master craftsmanship. I'll certainly be recommending this book to clients. I wish I had this book 14 years ago!" -Russ Miles, CEO, OpenCredo

    This internationally recognized standard provides the essential tools to practice project management and deliver organizational results.

    Now, pioneering ThoughtWorks software engineering expert Sriram Narayan shows how to do just that. Drawing on 15+ years working with leaders in telecommunications, finance, energy, retail, and beyond, he introduces a comprehensive agile approach to "Business-IT Effectiveness" that is as practical as it is valuable. Narayan demonstrates how to integrate agility throughout sales, marketing, product development, engineering, and operations, helping each function deliver more value individually and through its linkages with the rest of the business. Addressing people, process, and technology, he guides you in improving both the dynamic and static aspects of organization design, addressing team structure, accountability structures, organizational norms and culture, knowledge management, and more. Using real examples, Narayan helps you evaluate and improve organization designs to enhance autonomy, mastery, and purpose. You'll learn how to eliminate the specific organizational silos that cause the most problems... improve communication in organizations that claim to be (but aren't really) non-hierarchical... optimize the way you build teams, design office space, and even choose tools. Simply put, Agile IT Organization Design will help you improve improving the performance of any software organization by propagating agile wherever it makes sense and offers value.

    Get the most out of BDD in Ruby with The RSpec Book, written by the lead developer of RSpec, David Chelimsky. You'll get started right away with RSpec 2 and Cucumber by developing a simple game, using Cucumber to express high-level requirements in language your customer understands, and RSpec to express more granular requirements that focus on the behavior of individual objects in the system. You'll learn how to use test doubles (mocks and stubs) to control the environment and focus the RSpec examples on one object at a time, and how to customize RSpec to "speak" in the language of your domain. You'll develop Rails 3 applications and use companion tools such as Webrat and Selenium to express requirements for web applications both in memory and in the browser. And you'll learn to specify Rails views, controllers, and models, each in complete isolation from the other. Whether you're developing applications, frameworks, or the libraries that power them, The RSpec Book will help you write better code, better tests, and deliver better software to happier users.

    So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems?In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google's Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You'll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient--lessons directly applicable to your organization.This book is divided into four sections: Introduction--Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practicesPrinciples--Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE)Practices--Understand the theory and practice of an SRE's day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systemsManagement--Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

    The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses—one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer—and will understand how to do it.