Recommendations based on "The Handbook of Global User Research"

First, businesses discovered quality as a key competitive edge; next came service. Now, Donald A. Norman, former Director of the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of California, reveals how smart design is the new competitive frontier. The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

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.

An engaging introduction to data science that emphasizes critical thinking over statistical techniquesAn introduction to data science or statistics shouldn’t involve proving complex theorems or memorizing obscure terms and formulas, but that is exactly what most introductory quantitative textbooks emphasize. In contrast, Thinking Clearly with Data focuses, first and foremost, on critical thinking and conceptual understanding in order to teach students how to be better consumers and analysts of the kinds of quantitative information and arguments that they will encounter throughout their lives.Among much else, the book teaches how to assess whether an observed relationship in data reflects a genuine relationship in the world and, if so, whether it is causal; how to make the most informative comparisons for answering questions; what questions to ask others who are making arguments using quantitative evidence; which statistics are particularly informative or misleading; how quantitative evidence should and shouldn’t influence decision-making; and how to make better decisions by using moral values as well as data. Filled with real-world examples, the book shows how its thinking tools apply to problems in a wide variety of subjects, including elections, civil conflict, crime, terrorism, financial crises, health care, sports, music, and space travel.Above all else, Thinking Clearly with Data demonstrates why, despite the many benefits of our data-driven age, data can never be a substitute for thinking.An ideal textbook for introductory quantitative methods courses in data science, statistics, political science, economics, psychology, sociology, public policy, and other fields Introduces the basic toolkit of data analysis―including sampling, hypothesis testing, Bayesian inference, regression, experiments, instrumental variables, differences in differences, and regression discontinuity Uses real-world examples and data from a wide variety of subjects Includes practice questions and data exercises

We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as:What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen? What makes memories stick? What is more important, peripheral or central vision? How can you predict the types of errors that people will make? What is the limit to someone’s social circle? How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step? What line length for text is best? Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.

Improve and Accelerate Software Delivery for Large, Distributed, Complex Projects The Nexus Framework is the simplest, most effective approach to applying Scrum at scale across multiple teams, sites, and time zones. Created by Scrum.org--the pioneering Scrum training and certification organization founded by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber--Nexus draws on decades of experience to address the unique challenges teams face in coming together, sharing work, and managing and minimizing dependencies. The NexusTM Framework for Scaling Scrum is a concise book that shows how Nexus helps teams to deliver a complex, multi-platform, software-based product in short, frequent cycles, without sacrificing consistency or quality, and without adding unnecessary complexity or straying from Scrum's core principles. Using an extended case study, the authors illustrate how Nexus helps teams solve common scaling challenges like reducing cross-team dependencies, preserving team self-organization and transparency, and ensuring accountability. Understand the challenges of delivering working, integrated product increments with multiple teams, and how Nexus addresses them Form a Nexus around a new or existing product and learn how that Nexus sets goals and plans its work Run Sprints within a Nexus, provide transparency into progress, conduct effective Nexus Sprint reviews, and use Nexus Sprint Retrospectives to continuously improve Overcome the distributed team collaboration challenges Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.

True leaders aren't made by business schools. They make themselves Getting a MBA degree has become difficult to justify not just because of the large price tag but also because of the growing impracticality. Even the elites like Harvard and Wharton offer outdated, assembly-line programs that teach you more about PowerPoint presentations than about how business really works. For ten years, Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA has served as an effective alternative introducing hundreds of thousands of readers to the most powerful business concepts of all time. He shares the essentials of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, operations, productivity, systems design, and much more, in one comprehensive volume. The Personal MBA explains- - The Iron Law of the Market- Why every business is limited by the size and quality of the market it attempts to serve-and how to find large, hungry markets - The 12 Forms of Value- Products and services are only two of the twelve ways you can create value for your customers - Option Fatigue- Why consumers are more likely to buy something when faced with three options rather than thirty - Entropy- Why focusing too heavily on creating new products and systems is a great way to go out of business With The Personal MBA, you will avoid years of pointless group work, unhelpful financial models and daunting student loans. Instead, you will have gained the skills and tools necessary to take your place among today's business leaders.

Software development projects can be fun, productive, and even daring. Yet they can consistently deliver value to a business and remain under control. Extreme Programming (XP) was conceived and developed to address the specific needs of software development conducted by small teams in the face of vague and changing requirements. This new lightweight methodology challenges many conventional tenets, including the long-held assumption that the cost of changing a piece of software necessarily rises dramatically over the course of time. XP recognizes that projects have to work to achieve this reduction in cost and exploit the savings once they have been earned. Fundamentals of XP include: Distinguishing between the decisions to be made by business interests and those to be made by project stakeholders. Writing unit tests before programming and keeping all of the tests running at all times. Integrating and testing the whole system--several times a day. Producing all software in pairs, two programmers at one screen. Starting projects with a simple design that constantly evolves to add needed flexibility and remove unneeded complexity. Putting a minimal system into production quickly and growing it in whatever directions prove most valuable. Why is XP so controversial? Some sacred cows don't make the cut in XP: Don't force team members to specialize and become analysts, architects, programmers, testers, and integrators--every XP programmer participates in all of these critical activities every day. Don't conduct complete up-front analysis and design--an XP project starts with a quick analysis of the entire system, and XPprogrammers continue to make analysis and design decisions throughout development. Develop infrastructure and frameworks as you develop your application, not up-front--delivering business value is the heartbeat that drives XP projects. Don't write and maintain implementation documentation--communication in XP projects occurs face-to-face, or through efficient tests and carefully written code. You may love XP, or you may hate it, but "Extreme Programming Explained" will force you to take a fresh look at how you develop software. 0201616416B04062001

In many organizations, management is the biggest obstacle to successful Agile development. 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.  

Now revised and expanded with five new chapters for the 10th anniversary of its 2015 publication, the beloved classic on truly human leadership “Bob Chapman, CEO of the $1.7 billion manufacturing company Barry-Wehmiller, is on a mission to change the way businesses treat their employees.” – Inc. Magazine Starting in 1997, Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller have pioneered a dramatically different approach to leadership that creates off-the-charts morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance. The company utterly rejects the idea that employees are simply functions to be moved around, “managed” with carrots and sticks, or discarded at will. Instead, Barry-Wehmiller manifests the reality that every single person matters, just like in a family. It’s not a cliché on a mission statement; it’s the bedrock of the company’s success. It’s natural to be skeptical when you first hear about this approach. Every time Barry-Wehmiller acquires a company whose team members have experienced more traditional management practices, the new team members are skeptical too. But they soon learn what it’s like to work at an exceptional company where the goal is for everyone to feel trusted and cared for—and where it’s expected that they will justify that trust by caring for one another and putting the common good first. Chapman and coauthor Raj Sisodia show how any organization can reject the traumatic consequences of rolling layoffs, dehumanizing rules, and hypercompetitive cultures. In this tenth anniversary update to Everybody Matters, Chapman and Sisodia share new statistics and analysis on the leadership crisis that continues to plague modern businesses and that only Truly Human Leadership—pioneered at Barry-Wehmiller—can fix. Packed with additional insights gained over a decade as the company has evolved, weathered a pandemic, and grown from $1.7 billion in annual revenue with 100 acquisitions to $3.6 billion with more than 140 acquisitions, this updated classic is needed now more than ever. As Chapman says, “The way we lead impacts the way people live.” Once you stop treating people like functions or costs, disengaged workers begin to share their gifts and talents in service of a shared future. Uninspired workers stop feeling that their jobs have no meaning. Frustrated workers stop taking their bad days out on their spouses and kids. And everyone stops counting the minutes until it’s time to go home. This is the journey documented in Everybody Matters; now it’s time to transform your own workplace.

A stimulating new inquiry into the fundamental truth of strategy - its purpose, place, utility, and value. This new study is animated by a startling realization: the concept of strategic victory must be summarily discarded. This is not to say that victory has no place in strategy or strategic planning. The outcome of battles and campaigns are variables within the strategist's plan, but victory is a concept that has no meaning there. To the tactical and operational planner, wars are indeed won and lost, and the difference is plain. Success is measurable; failure is obvious. In contrast, the pure strategist understands that war is but one aspect of social and political competition, an ongoing interaction that has no finality. Strategy therefore connects the conduct of war with the intent of politics. It shapes and guides military means in anticipation of a panoply of possible coming events. In the process, strategy changes the context within which events will happen. In this new book we see clearly that the goal of strategy is not to culminate events, to establish finality in the discourse between states, but to continue them; to influence state discourse in such a way that it will go forward on favorable terms. For continue it will. This book will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking across the field and strategic studies.