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    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.

    

    Caught between a traditional approach to program and portfolio management, and half-baked Agile methods at the team level, he struggles to help his company find a way out. Faced with a nearly impossible quest, he attends a conference desperately seeking a solution. There he finds a glimpse of hope—a method that applies the notion of Agility at a much higher scale. Inspired by this discovery, Ethan charges into action, launching the rollout of a new method at his company. But in no time, he runs into a brick wall which puts the rollout, and his own career, in grave danger. He comes to realize that the basic culture and his enterprise’s way of thinking are its biggest impediments to success. His quest leads him to understand that his own mindset is also part of the problem.... The reader will be pulled into the exciting action unfolding as Ethan leads his organization towards enterprise agility. Fictional, but based on a broad range of real-life implementations, this novel by Alex Yakyma provides a war chest of techniques and tools to support large-scale rollouts of Lean and Agile methods.

    So how do they relate to each other? The purpose of this book is to clear up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your environment. Part I illustrates the similarities and differences between Kanban and Scrum, comparing for understanding, not for judgement. There is no such thing as a good or bad tool - just good or bad decisions about when and how to use which tool. This book includes: - Kanban and Scrum in a nutshell - Comparison of Kanban and Scrum and other Agile methods - Practical examples and pitfalls - Cartoons and diagrams illustrating day-to-day work - Detailed case study of a Kanban implementation within a Scrum organization Part II is a case study illustrating how a Scrum-based development organization implemented Kanban in their operations and support teams.

    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.

    This practical book demonstrates how entire organizations—from product managers and engineers to marketers and executives—can put Agile to work. Author Matt LeMay explains Agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice. Examples from a wide variety of organizations, including small nonprofits and global financial enterprises, bring to life the on-the-ground realities of Agile across industries and functions. Understand exactly what Agile is and why it matters Use Agile to address your organization’s specific needs and goals Take customer centricity from theory into practice Stop wasting time in "report and critique" meetings and start making better decisions Create a harmonious cycle of learning, collaborating, and delivering Learn from Agile experts at companies like IBM, Spotify, and Coca-Cola

    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.

    But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams.Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

    Extensively updated, it contains unsurpassed independent and objective coverage of Windows Server 2012's key innovations, including improved virtualization components, enhanced security tools, new web and management resources, and Windows 8 integration. Windows Server 2012 Unleashed reflects the authors' extraordinary experience implementing Windows Server 2012 in large-scale environments since its earliest alpha releases, reaching back more than two years prior to its official launch. Microsoft MVP Rand Morimoto and his colleagues fully address every aspect of deploying and operating Windows Server 2012, including Active Directory, networking and core application services, security, migration from Windows Server 2003/2008, administration, fault tolerance, optimization, troubleshooting, and much more. Valuable for Windows professionals at all skill levels, this book will be especially indispensable for intermediate-to-advanced level professionals seeking expert, in-depth solutions. Every chapter contains tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned from actual deployments: practical information for using Windows Server 2012 to solve real business problems. Plan and migrate from Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Leverage powerful capabilities that are truly new in Windows Server 2012 Install Windows Server 2012 and the GUI-less Windows Server Core Upgrade to Windows Server 2012 Active Directory Utilize advanced AD capabilities including federated forests and identity management Plan and deploy network services, from DNS and DHCP to IPv6, IPAM, and IIS Protect systems and data with server-level security, transport-level security, and security policies Deliver true end-to-end secured anytime/anywhere access to remote/mobile clients Efficiently configure and manage users, sites, OUs, domains, and for­ests through Server Manager console Create more fault-tolerant environ­ments with DFS, clustering, and Network Load Balancing Leverage major Hyper-V virtualization improvements in availability, redun­dancy, and guest support Manage Active Directory more efficiently with Active Directory Administrative Center, Best Practice Analyzer, and PowerShell scripts Systematically tune, optimize, debug, and troubleshoot Windows Server 2012

    You've just been introduced to your new team as their Agile Coach. The team calls themselves The Dream Team. You are responsible for coming up with a plan to get the team back on track to achieve their project goals.Shortly after the initial product launch, The Dream Team was set a challenge by the Management Team to try out an alternative way of working called Agile. Eighteen months on and the team is working anything but like a dream. In fact, life's become a bit of a nightmare. Morale is low. Productivity has ground to a halt. Quality has become a taboo subject.Management believes the project has reached an impasse. They demand results and are prepared to outsource the remainder of the project. You have 5 days to figure out how to help the team move forward.Your fate and that of your team is entirely in your hands. What choices will you make? Choose badly and you’ll come to a sticky end. Choose wisely and you and your team stand a chance of living happily ever after. What will you choose to do?

    

    Readers will learn how to define the overall testing goals and strategies for the systems being tested.This hands-on, exercise-rich book provides experience with planning, scheduling, and tracking these tasks. You'll be able to describe and organize the necessary activities as well as learn to select, acquire, and assign adequate resources for testing tasks. Learn how to form, organize, and lead testing teams Master the organizing of communication among the members of the testing teams, and between the testing teams and all the other stakeholders. Additionally, you'll learn how to justify decisions and provide adequate reporting information where applicable.Target Audience: Software Testers, Programmers, System Designers, IT Managers

    This book will help you get better outcomes from retrospectives and from any continuous improvement initiative. It will help you consider how best to prepare for retrospectives, generate innovative insights, achieve valuable outcomes, improve facilitation techniques, keep things fresh and maybe even how to have a bit of fun whilst doing it. This book is for anyone who undertakes continuous improvement of any sort, especially those looking to get better outcomes from retrospectives, either as a participant, facilitator, coach or manager of teams. We include ideas for people with varying levels of experience. So, whether you are just getting started with Scrum and retrospectives, or a veteran of continuous improvement looking to fine-tune or get new ideas, or if your retrospectives have become a bit stale and need re-invigorating, there are ideas in here to support you.

    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.