Adaptive Leadership - Jim Highsmith

Accelerating Enterprise Agility

The agile software movement has now been around for a full decade. 

As coauthor of the original Agile Manifesto, Jim Highsmith has been at its heart since the beginning. 

He’s spent the past decade helping hundreds of organizations transition to agile/lean. 

When it comes to agile, he’s seen it all–in a variety of industries, worldwide.

Now, in Adaptive Leadership , he has compiled, updated, and extended his best writings about agile and lean methods for a management audience. Highsmith doesn’t just reveal what’s working and what isn’t; he offers a powerful new vision for extending agility across the enterprise.

Drawing on what’s been learned in application development, this guide shows how to use adaptive leadership techniques to transform the way you deliver complete solutions, whatever form they take. 

You’ll learn how enterprise agility can enable the ambitious organizational missions that matter most; how leaders can deliver a continuous stream of value; how to think disruptively about opportunities, and how to respond quickly by creating more adaptive, innovative organizations.

Coverage includes

• Discovering and executing new business opportunities far more quickly
• Delivering complete business solutions earlier, and iterating them more often
• Organizing for innovation, and systematically managing opportunity flow
• Clarifying the degree of strategic, portfolio, and operational agility you need, and focusing on your highest-value transformations
• Creating cultures that actually can adapt and learn
• Reinvigorating the roots of agile value and values
• Understanding IT’s changing value proposition, and retraining your people accordingly
• Integrating economics, products, and social responsibility
• Choosing metrics that guide agility, not counterproductive traditional metrics
• Understanding the financial implications of technical debt
• Optimizing business value by doing less–and guiding the process with ”NOT to do“ lists
• Speculating intelligently when you can’t plan away uncertainty
• Customizing management to each project’s needs (because not all projects should be equally agile)

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.74 out of 5 (19 Ratings, 3 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5.  

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The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

How to Get Things Right

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. 
Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. 
But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. 
First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. 
Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. 
Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. 
He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. 
And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4 out of 5 (19634 Ratings, 1982 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5.  

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Scion of Ikshvaku - Amish

Ramachandra Series - Book 1

Ram Rajya. 
The Perfect Land. 
But perfection has a price. 
He paid that price. 
3400 BCE. INDIA 
Ayodhya is weakened by divisions. 
A terrible war has taken its toll. 
The damage runs deep. 
The demon King of Lanka, Raavan, does not impose his rule on the defeated. He, instead, imposes his trade. 
Money is sucked out of the empire. 
The Sapt Sindhu people descend into poverty, despondency and corruption.
They cry for a leader to lead them out of the morass. 
Little do they appreciate that the leader is among them. 
One whom they know. 
A tortured and ostracised prince. 
A prince they tried to break.
 A prince called Ram. 
He loves his country, even when his countrymen torment him.
He stands alone for the law. 
His band of brothers, his Sita, and he, against the darkness of chaos. 
Will Ram rise above the taint that others heap on him? 
Will his love for Sita sustain him through his struggle? 
Will he defeat the demon Lord Raavan who destroyed his childhood? 
Will he fulfil the destiny of the Vishnu? 
Begin an epic journey with Amish's latest: The Ram Chandra Series.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.6 out of 5 (7342 Ratings, 936 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5.  

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A Strange Kind of Paradise - Sam Miller

India through Foreign Eyes

A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India's past and present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. 
Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans - everyone really, except for Indians themselves - came to imagine India. 
His account of the engagement between foreigners and India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. 
It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, EM Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles and Steve Jobs. 
Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller's own 25-year-long love affair with India. 
The result is a spellbinding, 2500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture and society, in the company of an author who informs, educates and entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies and overturns long held stereotypes about race, identity and migration. 
A tour de force that is at once scholarly and thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.in ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.96 out of 5 (69 Ratings, 13 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  

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Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders

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.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.12 out of 5 (771 Ratings, 61 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  

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The Story of Physics - Anne Rooney

From Natural Philosophy to the Enigma of Dark Matter
Physics is the science which ties together all others,aiming to explain the nature of the universe from the smallest subatomic particles to vast galaxies and the very nature of space-time. 
It represents human intellectual endeavor at its most ambitious.

The Story of Physics traces the development of physics from the natural philosophies of the ancient world to cutting-edge experiments in quantum mechanics.

Topics include:

• The nature of mattter, which was first theorized as atoms 2,500 years ago
• Light and optics - from simple lenses to the wave-particle duality of light 
• Masses and forces - harnessing energy and mass to work for us
• The bizarre subatomic world of quantum mechanics
• Our fascination with the stars, which prompted the earliest scientific thought
• The universe around us, from the Big Bang to distant galaxies

The Story of Physics also features the giants of science history, from Archimedes through Newton and Galileo to Curie, Einstein and Hawking. 
[Book Description Source: Book Cover Notes] 


From the Ancient Greeks, who first suggested that matter might be made of indivisible atoms, through the great explorations of Arab, the Renaissance and then Enlightenment scientists, the story of physics has been written through trial and error, sheer persistence, and intermittent flashes of pure genius, despite many periods of persecution, hardship, and danger. 
Author Anne Rooney follows its narrative from the earliest societies to the current day, discovering the entrancing appeal of the secrets that rule the universe. 
On the way from prehistory to the twenty-first century, we encounter Newton poking a needle into his own eye, Einstein paving the way for nuclear weapons, and the ultimate puzzle of dark matter. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout in full color.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.81 out of 5 (21 Ratings, 2 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  


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A Brigand for a Night and Other Tales - Madhavi N. Gunasheela

The short stories in this book span different genres from sagas to comedy to horror. 
Set in different time frames in both urban and rural settings, it makes for a combination of sorts. 
The author, having experienced an amalgam of cultures, has fashioned a potpourri, infusing the mystical east into the discriminative west. 
Prevailing social concerns and common Indian traditions have been played out to question the readers' views and will empower them to adopt a new mirror for reflection of outdated societal values and ways. 
Women play the lead role in few stories, indicating the author's strong need to highlight issues uniquely known only to women. 
An occasional international backdrop emphasizes the coziness of our global village and shrinking boundaries. 
Humor sprinkled generously as a tasty topping ensures the reader of a perpetual smile. 
Every grim thought uncovered amidst hilarious plots leaves the reader laughing at the otherwise dark circumstance. 
Light and easy to read, this book would be an ideal companion for a rainy afternoon or a lazy Sunday. 
It would transport you to different worlds at a dizzying speed, leaving you wanting to quickly return to relive the journey of the protagonist.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.5 out of 5 (2 Ratings, 1 Review)

My Rating:  4 out of 5.  


Buying Options 
  
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(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)