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management

The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

Managing people is difficult wherever you work, but the tech industry as a whole is pretty bad at it. Tech companies in general lack the experience, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. And the handful of books that share tips and tricks of engineering management don t explain how to supervise employees in the face of growth and change.

In this book, author Camille Fournier takes you through the stages of technical management, from mentoring interns to working with the senior staff. You ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path, whether you re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization.

* Discover how to manage small teams and large/multi-level teams
* Understand how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams
* Deal with people problems and learn how to mentor other managers and new leaders
* Learn how to manage yourself: avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders
* Obtain several practices that you can incorporate and practice along the way


Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

The #1 New York Times bestseller

"An incredible book... you teach guys and gals about leadership and you've helped not only military guys but families." - Megyn Kelly

"You show in the book how to motivate... thanks for writing the book Extreme Ownership." Bill O'Reilly

"[Jocko] is the co-author of an incredible new book - which I've been loving. Trust me. Buy it." - Tim Ferriss

"This is a life-learning lesson for everyone... the book is awesome." - Sean Hannity

Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields.
Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.
A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.


The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It's Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.

The company's new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill's entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.

In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never view IT the same way again.


Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale

How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale—and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization, rather than with just one department or team.

Through case studies, you’ll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance. 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


The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition

Generate Better, Faster Results-- Using Less Capital and Fewer Resources!

"[The High-Velocity Edge] contains ideas that form the basis for structured continuous learning and improvement in every aspect of our lives. While this book is tailored to business leaders, it should be read by high school seniors, college students, and those already in the workforce. With the broad societal application of these ideas, we can achieve levels of accomplishment not even imagined by most people."
The Honorable Paul H. O'Neill, former CEO and Chairman, Alcoa, and Former Secretary of the Treasury

"Some firms outperform competitors in many ways at once--cost, speed, innovation, service. How? Steve Spear opened my eyes to the secret of systemizing innovation: taking it from the occasional, unpredictable 'stroke of genius' to something you and your people do month-in, month-out to outdistance rivals."
Scott D. Cook, founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit, Inc.

"Steven Spear connects a deep study of systems with practical management insights and does it better than any organizational scholar I know. [This] is a profoundly important book that will challenge and inspire executives in all industries to think more clearly about the technical and social foundations of organizational excellence."
Donald M. Berwick, M.D., M.P.P., President and CEO, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

About the Book

How can some companies perform so well that their industry counterparts are competitors in name only? Although they operate in the same industry, serve the same market, and even use the same suppliers, these extraordinary, high-velocity organizations consistently outperform all the competition--and, more importantly, continually widen their leads.

In The High-Velocity Edge, the reissued edition of five-time Shingo Prize winner Steven J. Spear's critically acclaimed book Chasing the Rabbit, Spear describes what sets market-dominating companies apart and provides a detailed framework you can leverage to surge to the lead in your own industry. Spear examines the internal operations of dominant organizations across a wide spectrum of industries, from technology to design and from manufacturing to health care.

While he investigates several great operational triumphs, like top-tier teaching hospitals' fantastic improvements in quality of care, Pratt & Whitney's competitive gains in jet engine design, and the U.S. Navy's breakthroughs in inventing and applying nuclear propulsion, The High-Velocity Edge is not just about the adoration of success. It also takes a critical look at some of the operational missteps that have humbled even the most reputable and respected of companies and organizations. The decades-long prominence of Toyota, for example, is contrasted with the many factors leading to the automaker's sweeping 2010 product recalls. Taken together, these multiple perspectives and in-depth case studies show how to:


Build a system of "dynamic discovery" designed to reveal operational problems and weaknesses as they arise
Attack and solve problems when and where they occur, converting weaknesses into strengths
Disseminate knowledge gained from solving local problems throughout the company as a whole
Create managers invested in developing everyone's capacity to continually innovate and improve
Whatever kind of company you operate-- from technology to fi nance to healthcare-- mastery of these four key capabilities will put you on the fast track to operational excellence, where you will generate faster, better results--using less capital and fewer resources.

Apply the lessons of Steven J. Spear and gain a high-velocity edge over every competitor in your industry.


The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.


Lean from the Trenches

Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.


Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. While this advice may work for everyday life, it is, as Kim Scott has seen, a disaster when adopted by managers.

Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google and then decamped to Apple, where she developed a class on optimal management. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, the “radical candor” method.

Radical candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It’s about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism—delivered to produce better results and help employees achieve.

Great bosses have strong relationships with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get (sh)it done, and understand why it matters.

Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.


Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash

"This remarkable book combines practical advice, ready-to-use techniques, anda deep understanding of why this is the right way to develop software. I haveseen software teams transformed by the ideas in this book." --Mike Cohn, author of Agile Estimating and Planning "As a lean practitioner myself, I have loved and used their first book for years.When this second book came out, I was delighted that it was even better. If youare interested in how lean principles can be useful for software developmentorganizations, this is the book you are looking for. The Poppendiecks offer abeautiful blend of history, theory, and practice." --Alan Shalloway, coauthor of Design Patterns Explained "I've enjoyed reading the book very much. I feel it might even be better than thefirst lean book by Tom and Mary, while that one was already exceptionallygood! Mary especially has a lot of knowledge related to lean techniques inproduct development and manufacturing. It's rare that these techniques areactually translated to software. This is something no other book does well(except their first book)." --Bas Vodde "The new book by Mary and Tom Poppendieck provides a well-written andcomprehensive introduction to lean principles and selected practices for softwaremanagers and engineers. It illustrates the application of the values andpractices with well-suited success stories. I enjoyed reading it." --Roman Pichler "In Implementing Lean Software Development, the Poppendiecks explore moredeeply the themes they introduced in Lean Software Development. They beginwith a compelling history of lean thinking, then move to key areas such asvalue, waste, and people. Each chapter includes exercises to help you apply keypoints. If you want a better understanding of how lean ideas can work withsoftware, this book is for you." --Bill Wake, independent consultant In 2003, Mary and Tom Poppendieck's Lean Software Development introduced breakthrough development techniques that leverage Lean principles to deliver unprecedented agility and value. Now their widely anticipated sequel and companion guide shows exactly how to implement Lean software development, hands-on. This new book draws on the Poppendiecks' unparalleled experience helping development organizations optimize the entire software value stream. You'll discover the right questions to ask, the key issues to focus on, and techniques proven to work. The authors present case studies from leading-edge software organizations, and offer practical exercises for jumpstarting your own Lean initiatives. Managing to extend, nourish, and leverage agile practices Building true development teams, not just groups Driving quality through rapid feedback and detailed discipline Making decisions Just-in-Time, but no later Delivering fast: How PatientKeeper delivers 45 rock-solid releases per year Making tradeoffs that really satisfy customers Implementing Lean Software Development is indispensable to anyone who wants more effective development processes--managers, project leaders, senior developers, and architects in enterprise IT and software companies alike.


Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

Two of the computer industry's most popular authors and lecturers return with a new edition of the software management book that started a revolution.With humor and wisdom drawn from years of management and consulting experience, DeMarco and Lister demonstrate that the major issues of software development are human, not technical -- and that managers ignore them at their peril.

Now, with a new preface and eight new chapters -- expanding the original edition by one third -- the authors enlarge upon their previous ideas and add fresh insights, examples, and potent anecdotes.

Discover dozens of ingenious tips on how to

-- put more quality into a product

-- loosen up formal methodologies

-- fight corporate entropy

-- make it acceptable to be uninterruptible

Peopleware shows you how to cultivate teams that are healthy and productive. The answers aren't easy -- just incredibly successful.