Rediscover Lara Croft's greatest moments with fascinating coverage of the smash hit Tomb Raider movies, fiction, comics, and collectibles, and be enthralled by the legacy of Tomb Raider across the decades.Packed with exclusive art, photographs, and interviews covering all facets of the Tomb Raider franchise, 20 Years of Tomb Raider is the essential guide to this game's action-packed history and a must-have for every Tomb Raider fan.

    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.

    Commercial game development expert Robert Nystrom presents an array of general solutions to problems encountered in game development. For example, you'll learn how double-buffering enables a player to perceive smooth and realistic motion, and how the service locator pattern can help you provide access to services such as sound without coupling your code to any particular sound driver or sound hardware. Games have much in common with other software, but also a number of unique constraints. Some of the patterns in this book are well-known in other domains of software development. Other of the patterns are unique to gaming. In either case, Robert Nystrom bridges from the ivory tower world of software architecture to the in-the-trenches reality of hardcore game programming. You'll learn the patterns and the general problems that they solve. You'll come away able to apply powerful and reusable architectural solutions that enable you to produce higher quality games with less effort than before. Applies classic design patterns to game programming. Introduces new patterns specific to game programming. Brings abstract software architecture down to Earth with approachable writing and an emphasis on simple code that shows each pattern in practice. What you'll learn Overcome architectural challenges unique to game programming Apply lessons from the larger software world to games. Tie different parts of a game (graphics, sound, AI) into a cohesive whole. Create elegant and maintainable architecture. Achieve good, low-level performance. Gain insight into professional, game development. Who this book is forGame Programming Patterns is aimed at professional game programmers who, while successful in shipping games, are frustrated at how hard it sometimes is to add and modify features when a game is under development. Game Programming Patterns shows how to apply modern software practices to the problem of game development while still maintaining the blazing-fast performance demanded by hard-core gamers. Game Programming Patterns also appeals to those learning about game programming in their spare time. Hobbyists and aspiring professionals alike will find much to learn in this book about pathfinding, collision detection, and other game-programming problem domains.

    Adopting Lean will take time and commitment, but it’s vital for harnessing the cultural and technical forces that are accelerating the rate of innovation.* Discover how Lean focuses on people and teamwork at every level, in contrast to traditional management practices* Approach problem-solving experimentally, by exploring solutions, testing assumptions, and getting feedback from real users* Lead and manage large-scale programs in a way that empowers employees, increases the speed and quality of delivery, and lowers costs* Learn how to implement ideas from the DevOps and Lean Startup movements even in complex, regulated environments

    People need to be effective.Productivity books focus on doing more, Jim and Tonianne want you to focus on doing better. Personal Kanban is about choosing the right work at the right time. Recognizing why we do the things we do. Understanding the impact of our actions. Creating value - not just product. For ourselves, our families, our friends, our co-workers. For our legacy.Personal Kanban takes the same Lean principles from manufacturing that led the Japanese auto industry to become a global leader in quality, and applies them to individual and team work. Personal Kanban asks only that we visualize our work and limit our work-in-progress. Visualizing work allows us to transform our conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices. Combined, these two simple acts encourage us to improve the way we work and the way we make choices to balance our personal, professional, and social lives.Neither a prescription nor a plan, Personal Kanban provides a light, actionable, achievable framework for understanding our work and its context. This book describes why students, parents, business leaders, major corporations, and world governments all see immediate results with Personal Kanban.

    In Email Marketing Demystified, digital marketing expert Matthew Paulson reveals the strategies and techniques that top email marketers use to build large mailing lists, to write compelling copy that converts and to generate substantially more sales using nothing but their email list. Inside the book, you'll learn how to: Build a massive mailing list using 15 different proven list building techniques. Write compelling copy that engages your readers and drives them to take action. Optimize every step of your email marketing funnel to skyrocket your sales. Grow a highly-engaged and hungry fan-base that will devour your content. Create six new revenue streams for your business using email marketing. Keep your messages out of the spam folder by following our best practices. Matthew Paulson has organically grown an email list of more than 250,000 investors and generates more than $1 million per year in revenue using the strategies outlined in Email Marketing Demystified. Regardless of what kind of business you are building, email marketing can serve as the rocket fuel that that will skyrocket your business.

    Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents —is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

    The hands of a pocket watch reveal the time of day without following every spring, cog, and movement behind the face. Similarly, an OPPM template reduces any project--no matter how large or complicated--to a simple one-page document, perfect for communicating to upper management and other project stakeholders. Now in its Second Edition, this practical guide, currently saving time and effort in thousands of organizations worldwide, has itself been simplified, then refined and extended to include the innovative AgileOPPM(TM).This Second Edition will include new material and updates including an introduction of the ground-breaking AgileOPPM(TM) and an overview of MyOPPM(TM) template builder, available on-line Includes references throughout the book to the affiliated sections in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK(R)) Shows templates for the Project Management Office (PMO) This new and updated Second Edition will help you master the one-page approach to both traditional project management and Agile project management.(PMBOK is a registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.)

    But creating an environment for creative thinking and innovation can be a daunting challenge. How can you make it happen at your company? The answer may surprise you: gamestorming.This book includes more than 80 games to help you break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies. The authors have identified tools and techniques from some of the world's most innovative professionals, whose teams collaborate and make great things happen. This book is the result: a unique collection of games that encourage engagement and creativity while bringing more structure and clarity to the workplace. Find out why -- and how -- with Gamestorming.Overcome conflict and increase engagement with team-oriented gamesImprove collaboration and communication in cross-disciplinary teams with visual-thinking techniquesImprove understanding by role-playing customer and user experiencesGenerate better ideas and more of them, faster than ever beforeShorten meetings and make them more productiveSimulate and explore complex systems, interactions, and dynamicsIdentify a problem's root cause, and find the paths that point toward a solution

    The average kitchen, for example, is home to stuff galore, and every appliance, every utensil, every thing, is compound--composed of tens, hundreds, even thousands of other things. Although each piece of stuff satisfies some desire, it also creates the need for even more stuff: cereal demands a spoon; a television demands a remote. Rich Gold calls this dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff the Plenitude. And in this book--at once cartoon treatise, autobiographical reflection, and practical essay in moral philosophy--he tells us how to understand and live with it.Gold writes about the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory (but in his view, complementary) perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer--all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career. I have spent my life making more stuff for the Plenitude, he writes, acknowledging that the Plenitude grows not only because it creates a desire for more of itself but also because it is extraordinary and pleasurable to create.Gold illustrates these creative expressions with witty cartoons. He describes seven patterns of innovation--including The Big Kahuna, Colonization (which is illustrated by a drawing of The real history of baseball, beginning with Play for free in the backyard and ending with Pay to play interactive baseball at home), and Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff (and its corollary, Technology Desires to Be Product). Finally, he meditates on the Plenitude itself and its moral contradictions. How can we in good conscience accept the pleasures of creating stuff that only creates the need for more stuff? He quotes a friend: We should be careful to make the world we actually want to live in.

    Now, they build on their message with a bold, iconoclastic strategy for creating the ideal company culture—what they call "the calm company." Their approach directly attack the chaos, anxiety, and stress that plagues millions of workplaces and hampers billions of workers every day.Long hours, an excessive workload, and a lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for modern professionals. But it should be a mark of stupidity, the authors argue. Sadly, this isn’t just a problem for large organizations—individuals, contractors, and solopreneurs are burning themselves out the same way. The answer to better productivity isn’t more hours—it’s less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress.It’s time to stop celebrating Crazy, and start celebrating Calm, Fried and Hansson assert.Fried and Hansson have the proof to back up their argument. "Calm" has been the cornerstone of their company’s culture since Basecamp began twenty years ago. Destined to become the management guide for the next generation, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work is a practical and inspiring distillation of their insights and experiences. It isn’t a book telling you what to do. It’s a book showing you what they’ve done—and how any manager or executive no matter the industry or size of the company, can do it too.

    Now you can study at the office, on a plane or even in your car with RMC’s portable and extremely valuable Hot Topics PMP® Exam Flashcards—in hard copy or audio CD format. Over 300 of the most important and difficult to recall PMP® exam-related terms and concepts are now available for study as you drive, fly or take your lunch break. Order them both! This product is aligned with the PMBOK® Guide Third Edition (2005).

    In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." —Satoru IwataSatoru Iwata was the former Global President and CEO of Nintendo and a gifted programmer who played a key role in the creation of many of the world’s best-known games. He led the production of innovative platforms such as the Nintendo DS and the Wii, and laid the groundwork for the development of the wildly successful Pokémon Go game and the Nintendo Switch. Known for his analytical and imaginative mind, but even more for his humility and people-first approach to leadership, Satoru Iwata was beloved by game fans and developers worldwide. In this motivational collection, Satoru Iwata addresses diverse subjects such as locating bottlenecks, how success breeds resistance to change, and why programmers should never say no. Drawn from the "Iwata Asks" series of interviews with key contributors to Nintendo games and hardware, and featuring conversations with renowned Mario franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto and creator of EarthBound Shigesato Itoi, Ask Iwata offers game fans and business leaders an insight into the leadership, development and design philosophies of one of the most beloved figures in gaming history.

    Crucial Conversations gives you the tools you need to step up to life's most difficult and important conversations, say what's on your mind, and achieve the positive resolutions you want. You'll learn how to: Prepare for high-impact situations with a six-minute mastery technique Make it safe to talk about almost anything Be persuasive, not abrasive Keep listening when others blow up or clam up Turn crucial conversations into the action and results you want

    If you are seriously interested in understanding how you and your team can start down the path of improvement with XP, you must read this book."-- Francesco Cirillo, Chief Executive Officer, XPLabs S.R.L. "The first edition of this book told us what XP was--it changed the way many of us think about software development. This second edition takes it farther and gives us a lot more of the 'why' of XP, the motivations and the principles behind the practices. This is great stuff. Armed with the 'what' and the 'why, ' we can now all set out to confidently work on the 'how' how to run our projects better, and how to get agile techniques adopted in our organizations."-- Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmers LLC "This book is dynamite! It was revolutionary when it first appeared a few years ago, and this new edition is equally profound. For those who insist on cookbook checklists, there's an excellent chapter on 'primary practices, ' but I urge you to begin by truly contemplating the meaning of the opening sentence in the first chapter of Kent Beck's book: 'XP is about social change.' You should do whatever it takes to ensure that every IT professional and every IT manager--all the way up to the CIO--has a copy of Extreme Programming Explained on his or her desk."-- Ed Yourdon, author and consultant "XP is a powerful set of concepts for simplifying the process of software design, development, and testing. It is about minimalism and incrementalism, which are especially useful principles when tackling complex problems that require a balance of creativity and discipline."-- Michael A. Cusumano, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of The Business of Software " Extreme Programming Explained is the work of a talented and passionate craftsman. Kent Beck has brought together a compelling collection of ideas about programming and management that deserves your full attention. My only beef is that our profession has gotten to a point where such common-sense ideas are labeled 'extreme.'..."-- Lou Mazzucchelli, Fellow, Cutter Business Technology Council "If your organization is ready for a change in the way it develops software, there's the slow incremental approach, fixing things one by one, or the fast track, jumping feet first into Extreme Programming. Do not be frightened by the name, it is not that extreme at all. It is mostly good old recipes and common sense, nicely integrated together, getting rid of all the fat that has accumulated over the years."-- Philippe Kruchten, UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia "Sometimes revolutionaries get left behind as the movement they started takes on a life of its own. In this book, Kent Beck shows that he remains ahead of the curve, leading XP to its next level. Incorporating five years of feedback, this book takes a fresh look at what it takes to develop better software in less time and for less money. There are no silver bullets here, just a set of practical principles that, when used wisely, can lead to dramatic improvements in software development productivity."-- Mary Poppendieck, author of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit "Kent Beck has revised his classic book based on five more years of applying and teaching XP. He shows how the path to XP is both