Books Guide: Personal Improvement

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Personal Improvement

List of books on the topic of Personal Improvement.

Keynote, Professional Presentations and Animations
By:
Angelo Spiler
Published:
December 27, 2015

Today Option One Publishers announced a new book about Apple’s presentation software Keynote. This e-book contains a complete and compact Apple Keynote course to build professional presentations and animations on your own. Through hands-on exercises, you quickly learn to use the interface, tools and commands. Special attention is given to effects and animations.

The Coder's Path to Wealth and Independence
By:
Mark Beckner
Published:
2014

The Coder's Path to Wealth and Independence explains how to transform yourself from a skilled programmer into a highly creative and effective businessperson leveraging the skills you already have.

Advanced Software Testing - Vol.3 Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test Analyst
By:
Rex Black, Jamie L. Mitchell
Published:
2011

This book is written for the technical test analyst who wants to achieve advanced skills in test analysis, design, and execution. With a hands-on, exercise-rich approach, this book teaches you how to define and carry out the tasks required to put a test strategy into action.

Agile Hiring
By:
Sean Landis
Published:
2011

This book presents a fresh approach that is tested by fire: developed by the author in over twenty years of experience hiring software professionals at both small companies and large. Drawing on principles from the "agile" software development movement, this book offers a different way to think about hiring.

Agile Productivity Unleashed
By:
Jamie Lynn Cooke
Published:
2010

Agile approaches are business practices with a proven track record for helping organizations achieve greater efficiency, higher-quality outputs and increased customer satisfaction. They enable organizations to avoid the trappings of extensive up-front planning and up-front budget commitments by encouraging staff to regularly produce high-value business outputs; and by basing ongoing financial and resource commitments on the delivered outcomes.

Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook
By:
Michael Lopp
Published:
2010

As a software engineer, you recognize at some point that there's much more to your career than dealing with code. Is it time to become a manager? Tell your boss he’s a jerk? Join that startup? Author Michael Lopp recalls his own make-or-break moments with Silicon Valley giants such as Apple, Netscape, and Symantec in Being Geek—an insightful and entertaining book that will help you make better career decisions.

Ethics and Technology: Controversies, Questions, and Strategies for Ethical Computing
By:
Herman T. Tavani, Ph.D.
Published:
2010

The new editorial of this respected text continues to provide students the information they need to fully grasp the complex issues in cyberethics that computer and noncomputer professional alike need to navigate the challenging waters of cyberspace. Each chapter is updated with new examples and scenarios to provide the most current information.

Facilitating Project Performance Improvement: A Practical Guide to Multi-Level Learning
By:
Jerry Julian
Published:
2010

Waiting until the end of a project to identify "lessons learned" is too late. By that time, the project may be ready for the scrap heap. But if your projects and programs include multi-level learning, you'll not only be fostering continuous improvements for the future, you'll be well-equipped to reduce the risk of failure while projects are "in-flight" so you can deliver maximum value to your client organization. Facilitating Project Performance Improvement helps any organization:

Making it Big in Software: Get the Job. Work the Org. Become Great
By:
Sam Lightstone
Published:
2010

Here’s all the information you need to jumpstart your software career: the best ways to get hired, move up, and blaze your way to the top!

Agile Career Development: Lessons and Approaches from IBM
By:
Mary Ann Bopp, et al.
Published:
2009

How do you make career development work for both the employee and the business? IBM® has done it by tightly linking employee-driven career development programs with corporate goals. In Agile Career Development, three of IBM’s leading HR innovators show how IBM has accomplished this by illustrating various lessons and approaches that can be applied to other organizations as well.

Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman
By:
Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye
Published:
2009

Are you doing all you can to further your career as a software developer? With today's rapidly changing and ever-expanding technologies, being successful requires more than technical expertise. To grow professionally, you also need soft skills and effective learning techniques. Honing those skills is what this book is all about. Authors Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye have cataloged dozens of behavior patterns to help you perfect essential aspects of your craft.

Beautiful Security: Leading Security Experts Explain How They Think
By:
Andy Oram and John Viega
Published:
2009

In this thought-provoking anthology, today's security experts describe bold and extraordinary methods used to secure computer systems in the face of ever-increasing threats.

Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders
By:
Andrew Stellman, et. al.
Published:
2009

What's it like to work on a great software development team facing an impossible problem? How do you build an effective team? Can a group of people who don't get along still build good software? How does a team leader keep everyone on track when the stakes are high and the schedule is tight? Beautiful Teams takes you behind the scenes with some of the most interesting teams in software engineering history.

Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How They Improve Software
By:
Tim Riley and Adam Goucher
Published:
2009

Successful software depends as much on scrupulous testing as it does on solid architecture or elegant code. But testing is not a routine process, it's a constant exploration of methods and an evolution of good ideas.

Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers
By:
Louis Testa
Published:
2009

As the technology leader at a small software company, you need to focus on people, products, processes, and technology as you bring your software to market, while doing your best to put out fires and minimize headaches.

Software Teamwork: Taking Ownership for Success in Software Development
By:
Jim Brosseau
Published:
2008

Software Teamwork is a compelling, innovative, intensely practical guide to improving the human dynamics that are crucial to building great software.

Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
By:
Andrew Oram, Greg Wilson
Published:
2007

How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders
By:
Jean Tabaka
Published:
2006

To succeed, an agile project demands outstanding collaboration among all its stakeholders. But great collaboration doesn’t happen by itself; it must be carefully planned and facilitated throughout the entire project lifecycle. Collaboration Explained is the first book to bring together proven, start-to-finish techniques for ensuring effective collaboration in any agile software project.

Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
By:
Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby
Published:
2005

Great management is difficult to see as it occurs. It's possible to see the results of great management, but it's not easy to see how managers achieve those results. Great management happens in one-on-one meetings and with other managers--all in private. It's hard to learn management by example when you can't see it. You can learn to be a better manager--even a great manager--with this guide.

Cube Farm
By:
Bill Blunden
Published:
2005

Truth is often stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to the workplace. In Cube Farm, author Bill Blunden recounts his three years in Minnesota, performing research and development for Lawson Software. Riddled with intrigue, duplicity and collusion, this story offers a trench-level view of a company in the throes of internal rivalry, and suffering from a string of failed projects.

Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
By:
M. Manns, PhD and L. Rising, PhD
Published:
2005

Since you picked up this book, we assume that you've tried to introduce something new into your organization. Maybe you were successful or maybe you were not completely happy with the result. Change is hard. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the people, just like you, those "powerless leaders," who have had some success in their attempts to introduce a new idea, could sit down with you and share their secrets? This book will provide the next best thing.

Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science of Hiring Technical People
By:
Johanna Rothman
Published:
2004

Good technical people are the foundation on which successful high technology organizations are built. Establishing a good process for hiring such workers is essential. Unfortunately, the generic methods so often used for hiring skill-based staff, who can apply standardized methods to almost any situation, are of little use to those charged with the task of hiring technical people.

Communication Gaps and How to Close Them
By:
Naomi Karten
Published:
2002

If you develop systems or software for a living, you know that communication is essential for success.

Developers, managers, and testers have to understand each other clearly in order to meet client requirements, build work-related relationships, and survive time pressures and market demands. So often, though, communication breaks down, and we shout at each other across communication gaps that widen into yawning chasms.

An Introduction to General Systems Thinking
By:
Gerald Weinberg
Published:
2001

For more than twenty-five years, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking has been hailed as an innovative introduction to systems theory, with applications in computer science and beyond. Used in university courses and professional seminars all over the world, the text has proven its ability to open minds and sharpen thinking.

Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring
By:
Margo Murray
Published:
2001

This revised and updated edition offers step-by-step guidelines for creating a cost-effective mentoring program that will foster employee learning and growth. Shows how these programs can be rewarding for mentors and can contribute measurably to both individual and organizational performance.

Amplifying Your Effectiveness: Collected Essays
By:
James Bach, Naomi Karten, Gerald Weinberg
Published:
2000

Gerald M.Weinberg, James Bach, Naomi Karten, and numerous other successful software consultants present powerful ideas on how software engineers and managers can amplify their professional effectiveness--as individuals, as members of teams, and as members of organizations. The Collected Essays address diverse topics in personal empowerment, interpersonal interaction, mastering projects, and changing the organization.

Death March: The Complete Software Developer’s Guide to Surviving "Mission Impossible" Projects
By:
Paul Becker, Edward Yourdon
Published:
1997

This book is intended for software developers and managers. Ed Yourdon addresses the projects that people never want to join but are often asked, cajoled, or ordered to participate in--death-march projects that are "doomed to fail." If you have ever been on one, you know what a death-march project is. This book describes the reasons these projects continue to happen, suggests which ones to avoid, and explains how to survive if you become part of one.

Introduction to the Personal Software Process
By:
Watts Humphrey
Published:
1997

This book is a hands-on introduction to basic disciplines of software engineering. Designed as a workbook companion to any introductory programming or software engineering text, Watts Humphrey provides the practical means to integrate his highly regarded Personal Software Process (PSP) into college and university curricula. 

Constantine on Peopleware
By:
Larry Constantine
Published:
1995

Constantine on Peopleware presents more than thirty essays and articles. Larry Constantine draws on diverse experiences as an educator, family therapist, and systems expert. He covers a broad range of issues, including quality and productivity, teamwork, group dynamics, personality and programming, project management and organizational issues, interface design and human-machine interaction, cognition, psychology, and thought processes.

De Bono's Thinking Course
By:
Edward de Bono
Published:
1994

Rhodes scholar, founder of the International Creative Forum, originator of the concept of "lateral thinking," and well-known provider of corporate workshops on thinking, de Bono here provides the essence of his teachings and writings (repeatedly referred to throughout this volume) for those who cannot attend those pricey sessions.

Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach
By:
Gerald Weinberg
Published:
1986

In the book's title, the emphasis should be on the word "leader" rather than on "technical." Weinberg takes an insightful look at what constitutes a leader and provides ideas on how each of us can discover the leader in ourselves. Each chapter concludes with some thought-provoking questions or exercises on problem solving, self examination, or leadership.

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