Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole. This fully updated edition of The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision-making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use. New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and tools Many new case examples Major expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book. New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group Dynamics Doubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges. Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas – now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.
The best book on collaboration ever written!" —Diane Flannery, founding CEO, Juma Ventures And now this classic book is even better—much better. Completely revised and updated, the second edition is loaded with new tools and techniques. Two powerful new chapters on agenda design A full section devoted to reaching closure More than twice as many tools for handling difficult dynamics 70 brand-new pages and over 100 pages significantly improved
Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole. This fully updated edition of The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision-making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use. New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and tools Many new case examples Major expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book. New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group Dynamics Doubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges. Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas – now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.
Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is written for any software team that is considering running a software project using Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), or evaluating modern software development practices for its use. It is about the value-up paradigm of software development, which forms the basis of VSTS: its guiding ideas, why they are presented in certain ways, and how they fit into the process of managing the software lifecycle. This book is the next best thing to having an onsite coach who can lead the team through a consistent set of processes. Sam Guckenheimer has been the chief customer advocate for VSTS, responsible for its end-to-end external design. He has written this book as a framework for thinking about software projects in a way that can be directly tooled by VSTS. It presents essential theory and practical examples to describe a realistic process for IT projects. Readers will learn what they need to know to get started with VSTS, including The role of the value-up paradigm (versus work-down) in the software development lifecycle, and the meanings and importance of “flow” The use of MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement Work items for planning and managing backlog in VSTS Multidimensional, daily metrics to maintain project flow and enable estimation Creating requirements using personas and scenarios Project management with iterations, trustworthy transparency, and friction-free metrics Architectural design using a value-up view, service-oriented architecture, constraints, and qualities of service Development with unit tests, code coverage, profiling, and build automation Testing for customer value with scenarios, qualities of service, configurations, data, exploration, and metrics Effective bug reporting and bug assessment Troubleshooting a project: recognizing and correcting common pitfalls and antipatterns This is a book that any team using or considering VSTS should read.
E. J. Rath was the pen name of Chauncey Brainerd and his wife Edith Rathbone Jacobs Brainerd (1885-1922), both American writers. Many of their novels were adapted for stage or film, and include "Once Again," "The Nervous Wreck" and others.
Use Visual Studio® Team Foundation Server 2012 and Agile Methods to Deliver Higher Value Software Faster This is the definitive guide to applying agile development and modern software engineering practices with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012—Microsoft’s complementary Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform. Written by the Microsoft Visual Studio product owner and a long-time Team Foundation Server implementation specialist, it focuses on solving real development challenges, systematically eliminating waste, improving transparency, and delivering better software more quickly and painlessly. Coverage includes • Accelerating the “flow of value” to customers, with a transparent backlog, PowerPoint Storyboarding, VS 2012 feedback requests, and a “usability lab” right into your customers’ hands • Driving quality upstream to uncover hidden architectural patterns, ensure cleaner code, fix multiple recurring “cloned” bugs at once, ensure the definition of done with continuous integration and deployment in a reliable build process • Eliminating “no repro” bugs with VS 2012’s six powerful mechanisms for more accurate fault identification and use of virtualized test environments • Using Scrum or other Agile methods with Process Templates effectively across distributed teams in large organization by automating burndowns and dashboards to identify “early warning signals” of emerging problems with quality or maintainability • Staying in the groove by storing the state of your work and environment with shelvesets, to let you handle interruptions smoothly • Leveraging VS 2012’s new support for multiple Microsoft and open source unit testing frameworks in your IDE and continuous integration pipeline • Performing exploratory testing to uncover bugs in surprising places and testing immersive Windows 8 apps • Rapidly improving team development and collaboration with the hosted Team Foundation Service Whatever your development role, this book will help you apply modern software development practices using Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 to focus on what really matters: building software that begins delivering exceptional value sooner and keeps delighting customers far into the future.
Feeling overwhelmed? Procrastinating, then frantically pushing to get everything done? The good news is that healthy productivity is not about doing more. It’s about doing more of what matters. Modern life has us feeling swamped, unsure how to move forward on goals and dreams while still managing the day-to-day. And then there are all those other things still on the list: the garage needs cleaning, those photos need organizing, and the emails, the emails, the emails . . . Sam Bennett presents a radically simple idea: small actions, the kind you can do in 15 minutes, are enough to move the needle on your levels of joy and satisfaction — and ultimately change your life. Sam guides you from overwhelm to accomplishment by showing you how to: • let go of perfectionism, self-doubt, impostor syndrome, and other destructive patterns • manage when life feels out of control due to health or family concerns • break intimidating projects into a series of manageable tasks • tactfully say no to extra work when people put you on the spot • take a quarter of an hour a day for yourself to create new routines that support a balanced life
What Are You Waiting For? An overwhelmed procrastinator, frustrated overachiever, and recovering perfectionist herself, Sam Bennett knows all the ways we avoid pursuing our dreams and reaching our goals. She also knows how to “get it done.” Start Right Where You Are is an easy-to-read, easy-to-do guidebook for anyone who wants to change their life but doesn’t know where or how to begin. Of course, the process of getting out of your own way, raising your self-esteem, improving your relationships, and making better choices can be a bumpy road. But Bennett’s fun, original voice lets you know that you’ve got a friend along the way, a friend who offers a comforting cup of tea — or a bracing shot of whiskey, depending. Her gentle-kiss-on-the-cheek and loving-thwack-upside-the-head attitude gives us what we all need: inspiration, shortcuts, and breathing room.
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