Many people stroll through life feeling like they don’t deserve the good life that they have. They feel like an imposter and may expressly label themselves as such. When they receive compliments or praise, they reflexively deflect them by explaining that they were just lucky or that they have good helpers. Some explain that this was only due to their religion or family. Unfortunately, these statements tend to minimize one’s own appreciation of the talent…
I’ve worked as a software developer in Agile environments since around 2014 and have enjoyed the productivity and quality gains that this paradigm provides. This workplace loosely implements Agile and accomplishes amazing feats of productivity. In this book, Ashar distills Agile concepts into easy-to-read chunks that can be quickly implemented. This book empowers managers to organize their team’s work more effectively so that customers can benefit more readily. Ashar begins this guide by stating that…
DevOps, roughly speaking, seeks to get IT workers to interact with each other more – particularly when they are in different functional roles. Authors Humble and Kim have led this movement and pioneered annual studies to ascertain its progress among practitioners of technology. In this book, they team together with Forsgren (a PhD who brings a rigorous knowledge of statistics and data collection to the table) to present their findings and explain their methods. IT…
For decades, followers of technology have touted the value of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in computing. Some present a utopian future; others present a dystopian future. In this work, Upadhyay presents a realistic assessment of what’s inevitably coming. He overviews the essential parts of the technology – like convoluted neural networks or K-nearest-neighbor mapping – and then speculates on their business value. At 178 pages, this work does not waste unnecessary words. It instead provides a…
Most people engage the world passionately through labor of some kind, only to lose their sense of purpose with time. Work becomes repetitive, and new outlets become sparse. In this book, Sinek suggests that great leaders continually re-engage with why they are doing what they do. They articulate their vision and systematize their effects in organization. By scaling their purpose, the best leaders inspire others to amplify their purpose for positive (and measurable) outcomes. Now,…
The author of this book is someone who has spent most of his life in the hotel industry. He is passionate about the value of employee satisfaction and seemingly has made it to be the cornerstone of his professional philosophy. He shares that passion with readers in the context of this book. By supplying copious personal examples, he attempts to get the reader interested in his perspective on business and specifically management. However, his writing…
My boss is so much a fan of this book that she gave it to me free this month. She reads it every year in pursuit of further mastery of her work and life. Although the obvious application is to the realm of employment, Allen’s approach is applicable to one’s personal/private life and even to stay-at-home parents. It’s about keeping the “projects” in one’s life moving forward without causing stress. Allen’s system runs off on…
In this work, Goodwin charts the lives of four influential US Presidents – Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Having written leading biographies previously of each of these, she combines her insights to profile the character of leadership, at least in an American form. She distills prior deep study of these presidents into an interwoven narrative that highlights how their personal narratives enabled them to meet the challenges of their times…
The business of making software is fairly unique. Software does not follow a traditional assembly-line process, but still borrows from many sources of theory to guide its production. Some projects follow a “waterfall” plan, and others follow an “agile” methodology; a wide array of differently named tests populates discussions. Crosby seeks to unify disparate voices such as these in one place and so to inform us of the business-side of software development. The author is…
Issues exposing unconscious bias have gripped my home country, the United States of America. Books like this help us address these issues in quiet pages before they escalate onto the street. Williams collects interviews from a diverse group of people in the workplace. Together, these can serve as ways for workers to understand their colleagues nearby. She groups these interviews into five parts: Race, women, LGBTQ+, age and ability, and religion and culture. The latter…