Recommendations based on "The No Asshole Rule"

An instant classic, this revised and updated edition of the phenomenal bestseller dispels the myths about starting your own business. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber, with sharp insight gained from years of experience, points out how common assumptions, expectations, and even technical expertise can get in the way of running a successful business. Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business. The E-Myth Revisited will help you grow your business in a productive, assured way.

“Our job as Scrum professionals is to continually improve our ability to use Scrum to deliver products and services that help customers achieve valuable outcomes. This book will help you to improve your ability to apply Scrum.” –From the Foreword by Ken Schwaber, co-author of Scrum Mastering Professional Scrum is for anyone who wants to deliver increased value by using Scrum more effectively. Leading Scrum practitioners Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl draw on years of Scrum training and coaching to help you return to first principles and apply Scrum with the professionalism required to achieve its transformative potential. The authors aim to help you focus on proven Scrum approaches for improving quality, getting and using fast feedback, and becoming more adaptable, instead of “going through the motions” and settling for only modest improvements. Whether you’re a Scrum Master, Development Team member, or Product Owner, you’ll find practical advice for facing challenges with transparency and courage, overcoming a wide array of common challenges, and continually improving your Scrum practice. Realistically assess your current Scrum practice, and identify areas for improvement Recognize what a great Scrum Team looks like and get there Focus on “Done”–not “sort-of-Done” or “almost-Done” Measure and optimize the value delivered by every Product Increment Improve the way you plan, develop, and grow Clear away wider organizational impediments to agility and professionalism Overcome common misconceptions that stand in the way of progress Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

In this timely manifesto, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework broadly reject the prevailing notion that long hours, aggressive hustle, and "whatever it takes" are required to run a successful business today.In Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson introduced a new path to working effectively. 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.

Improve Your Creativity, Effectiveness, and Ultimately, Your Code In Modern Software Engineering, continuous delivery pioneer David Farley helps software professionals think about their work more effectively, manage it more successfully, and genuinely improve the quality of their applications, their lives, and the lives of their colleagues. Writing for programmers, managers, and technical leads at all levels of experience, Farley illuminates durable principles at the heart of effective software development. He distills the discipline into two core exercises: learning and exploration and managing complexity. For each, he defines principles that can help you improve everything from your mindset to the quality of your code, and describes approaches proven to promote success. Farley's ideas and techniques cohere into a unified, scientific, and foundational approach to solving practical software development problems within realistic economic constraints. This general, durable, and pervasive approach to software engineering can help you solve problems you haven't encountered yet, using today's technologies and tomorrow's. It offers you deeper insight into what you do every day, helping you create better software, faster, with more pleasure and personal fulfillment. Clarify what you're trying to accomplish Choose your tools based on sensible criteria Organize work and systems to facilitate continuing incremental progress Evaluate your progress toward thriving systems, not just more "legacy code" Gain more value from experimentation and empiricism Stay in control as systems grow more complex Achieve rigor without too much rigidity Learn from history and experience Distinguish "good" new software development ideas from "bad" ones Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Put into practice today's winning strategy for achieving success in high-end sales! The SPIN Selling Fieldbook is your guide to the method that has revolutionized big-ticket sales in the United States and globally. It's the method being used by one-half of all Fortune 500 companies to train their sales forces, and here's the interactive, hands-on field book that provides the practical tools you need to put this revolutionary method into action­­immediately. The SPIN Selling Fieldbook includes: Individual diagnostic exercises Illustrative case studies from leading companies Practical planning suggestions Provocative questionnaires Practice sessions to prepare you for dealing with challenging selling situations Written by the pioneering author of the original bestseller, SPIN Selling, this book is aimed at making implementation easy for companies that have not yet established SPIN techniques. It will also enable companies that are already using the method to reinforce SPIN methods in the field and in coaching sessions.

With the award-winning book Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices, Robert C. Martin helped bring Agile principles to tens of thousands of Java and C++ programmers. Now .NET programmers have a definitive guide to agile methods with this completely updated volume from Robert C. Martin and Micah Martin, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#.This book presents a series of case studies illustrating the fundamentals of Agile development and Agile design, and moves quickly from UML models to real C# code. The introductory chapters lay out the basics of the agile movement, while the later chapters show proven techniques in action. The book includes many source code examples that are also available for download from the authors’ Web site.Readers will come away from this book understanding Agile principles, and the fourteen practices of Extreme Programming Spiking, splitting, velocity, and planning iterations and releases Test-driven development, test-first design, and acceptance testing Refactoring with unit testing Pair programming Agile design and design smells The five types of UML diagrams and how to use them effectively Object-oriented package design and design patterns How to put all of it together for a real-world projectWhether you are a C# programmer or a Visual Basic or Java programmer learning C#, a software development manager, or a business analyst, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# is the first book you should read to understand agile software and how it applies to programming in the .NET Framework.

In The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. This book is packed with practical advice–about everything from estimating and coding to refactoring and testing. It covers much more than technique: It is about attitude. Martin shows how to approach software development with honour, self-respect, and pride; work well and work clean; communicate and estimate faithfully; face difficult decisions with clarity and honesty; and understand that deep knowledge comes with a responsibility to act. Readers will learn What it means to behave as a true software craftsman How to deal with conflict, tight schedules, and unreasonable managers How to get into the flow of coding, and get past writer’s block How to handle unrelenting pressure and avoid burnout How to combine enduring attitudes with new development paradigms How to manage your time, and avoid blind alleys, marshes, bogs, and swamps How to foster environments where programmers and teams can thrive When to say “No”–and how to say it When to say “Yes”–and what yes really means

“Bernstein has become a guru to a peculiarly ’90s group: well-educated, Internet-powered people intent on investing well—and with minimal ‘help’ from professional Wall Street.”--Robert Barker, BusinessWeek William Bernstein is one of today’s most unlikely financial heroes. A practicing neurologist, he used his self-taught investment knowledge and research to build a popular investor’s website. Now, in the plain-spoken The Intelligent Asset Allocator, he shows independent investors how to build a diversified portfolio—without the help of a financial advisor. A breath of fresh air for investors tired of overly technical investment tomes, this book will help investors: Learn the risk/reward characteristics of various investment types Understand and apply portfolio theory for an improved risk/reward ratio Sharpen their focus, and take control of their investment programs William Bernstein runs a website—www.efficientfrontier.com—known for its quarterly journal of asset allocation and portfolio theory, Efficient Frontier.

User research is global – yet despite its pervasiveness, practitioners are not all well equipped to work globally. What may have worked in Nigeria may not be accepted in Russia, may be done differently in Brazil, may partly work in China, and may completely fail in Kuwait. And what often goes less noticed, but can be equally vexing are technical, logistical and planning issues such as hiring qualified translators, payment procedures, travel issues, setting up facilities and finding test participants.The Handbook of Global User Research is the first book to focus on global user research. The book collects insight from UX professionals from nine countries and, following a typical project timeline, presents practical insights into the preparation, fieldwork, analysis and reporting, and overall project management for global user research projects. Any user experience professional that works on global projects -- including those new to the field, UX veterans who need information on this expanding aspect of user research, and students -- will need this book to do their job effectively. - Presents the definitive collection of hard won lessons from user research professionals around the world - Includes real-world examples of global user research challenges and provides approaches to these issues - Contains anecdotes and hard-won from the field that illustrate actionable tactics for practitioners

What do you do when work is overwhelming, it feels like you're completely lost, and every mistake you make seems to pile more pressure on your shoulders? 'This book is the resilience you need to adapt and thrive as you enter the workplace.' Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One ________________­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ The definitive careers guide for starting out in today's working world. It's never been tougher to get started in your career. In a world where entry-level positions require years of experience, it can feel like you've fallen behind before you've even begun. Even when you finally manage to get yourself a job, how do you make sure you're standing out from the crowd and succeeding? In How to Go to Work, careers experts Lucy Clayton and Steven Haines deliver the indispensable guide to surviving and thriving at work. Whether you've just begun working your first Saturday shift, you're about to start an apprenticeship, or you're already climbing the leadership ladder, it's chock-full of the vital advice you need to jump-start your professional life. This practical and accessible guide will show you how to: - Find the right work experience and internships to make the best of your time - Deal with mistakes and handle the pressure that comes with professional work - Gain confidence, authority and resilience, and thrive in your role - Navigate the ups and downs of your early career and make fast progress From getting your foot through the door, to dealing with office politics and toxic workplaces, to negotiating pay, pensions and promotions, How to Go to Work is the essential manual for anyone embarking upon or consolidating their career. Using the collective wisdom of CEOs, creatives, scientists, activists and professionals in every industry, presented in the style of an entertaining but direct guide, Clayton and Haines prepare you for the ride of your life. ________________ 'A vital book to anyone trying to get their head round the challenges or work. Deadly serious advice delivered in a style that is never deadly serious. An important but entertaining read' Bruce Daisely, bestselling author of The Joy of Work 'Full of invaluable advice for those at the start of their career' Cate Sevilla, author of How to Work Without Losing Your Mind