Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together




I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die


Book Description

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.




DevOps For Dummies


Book Description

Develop faster with DevOps DevOps embraces a culture of unifying the creation and distribution of technology in a way that allows for faster release cycles and more resource-efficient product updating. DevOps For Dummies provides a guidebook for those on the development or operations side in need of a primer on this way of working. Inside, DevOps evangelist Emily Freeman provides a roadmap for adopting the management and technology tools, as well as the culture changes, needed to dive head-first into DevOps. Identify your organization’s needs Create a DevOps framework Change your organizational structure Manage projects in the DevOps world DevOps For Dummies is essential reading for developers and operations professionals in the early stages of DevOps adoption.




Smart but Scattered


Book Description

This book has been replaced by Smart but Scattered, Second Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-5459-1.




The Socially Intelligent Project Manager


Book Description

This no-nonsense guide to social intelligence for project managers gives you a step-by-step process for building a bulletproof project team—no matter what gaps exist in personality, geography, culture, or communication style. High-performing teams don't happen by magic. You need processes that are designed in a socially intelligent way if your team is going to overcome the modern world's tough challenges with coordination. To be a star project manager, you have to communicate with people in their individual learning styles, provide accountability in ways that won't be demotivating, and run meetings and minutes that people won't tune out. Your processes must be constructed in ways that respect the complex realities of social dynamics step by step. You have to know your team before you can motivate them, and you have to motivate them before you can manage them. In this book are foolproof techniques to make sure your team connects with you, each other, and everyone they need to get the job done. After all, a team should be more than the sum of its parts—and it's up to the project manager to provide the glue that holds it all together.




Making Things Happen


Book Description

Offers a collection of essays on philosophies and strategies for defining, leading, and managing projects. This book explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. It does not cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy.




The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile


Book Description

Streamline project workflow with expert agile implementation The Project Management Profession is beginning to go through rapid and profound transformation due to the widespread adoption of agile methodologies. Those changes are likely to dramatically change the role of project managers in many environments as we have known them and raise the bar for the entire project management profession; however, we are in the early stages of that transformation and there is a lot of confusion about the impact it has on project managers: There are many stereotypes and misconceptions that exist about both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management, Agile and traditional project management principles and practices are treated as separate and independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two and sometimes seen as in conflict with each other Agile and "Waterfall" are thought of as two binary, mutually-exclusive choices and companies sometimes try to force-fit their business and projects to one of those extremes when the right solution is to fit the approach to the project It’s no wonder that many Project Managers might be confused by all of this! This book will help project managers unravel a lot of the confusion that exists; develop a totally new perspective to see Agile and traditional plan-driven project management principles and practices in a new light as complementary to each other rather than competitive; and learn to develop an adaptive approach to blend those principles and practices together in the right proportions to fit any situation. There are many books on Agile and many books on traditional project management but what’s very unique about this book is that it takes an objective approach to help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of both of those areas to see how they can work synergistically to improve project outcomes in any project. The book includes discussion topics, real world case studies, and sample enterprise-level agile frameworks that facilitate hands-on learning as well as an in-depth discussion of the principles behind both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management practices to provide a more thorough level of understanding.




Life After Law


Book Description

Written by Harvard-trained ex-law firm partner Liz Brown, Life After Law: Finding Work You Love with the J.D. You Have provides specific, realistic, and honest advice on alternative careers for lawyers. Unlike generic career guides, Life After Law shows lawyers how to reframe their legal experience to their competitive advantage, no matter how long they have been in or out of practice, to find work they truly love. Brown herself moved from a high-powered partnership into an alternative career and draws from this experience, as well as that of dozens of former practicing attorneys, in the book. She acknowledges that changing careers is hard much harder than it was for most lawyers to get their first legal job after law school but it can ultimately be more fulfilling for many than a life in law. Life After Law offers an alternative framework and valuable analytic tools for potential careers to help launch lawyers into new fields and make them attractive hires for non-legal employers.




Life Admin


Book Description

Life "admin" are the administrative tasks that have exploded in our busy lives. Scheduling. Planning. Paying. The busier our lives are, the more the invisible "admin" piles up on top of us. A working mother, Emens realized that mental labor was consuming her. To survive-- and to help others along the way-- she gathered favorite tips and tricks, admin confessions, and the secrets of admin-happy households. Get past the invisible quicksand that is holding you back and learn how to do less "admin"--And do it better. -- adapted from publisher info




Managing the Testing Process


Book Description

An updated edition of the best tips and tools to plan, build, and execute a structured test operation In this update of his bestselling book, Rex Black walks you through how to develop essential tools and apply them to your test project. He helps you master the basic tools, apply the techniques to manage your resources, and give each area just the right amount of attention so that you can successfully survive managing a test project! Offering a thorough review of the tools and resources you will need to manage both large and small projects for hardware and software, this book prepares you to adapt the concepts across a broad range of settings. Simple and effective, the tools comply with industry standards and bring you up to date with the best test management practices and tools of leading hardware and software vendors. Rex Black draws from his own numerous testing experiences-- including the bad ones, so you can learn from his mistakes-- to provide you with insightful tips in test project management. He explores such topics as: Dates, budgets, and quality-expectations versus reality Fitting the testing process into the overall development or maintenance process How to choose and when to use test engineers and technicians, contractors and consultants, and external test labs and vendors Setting up and using an effective and simple bug-tracking database Following the status of each test case The companion Web site contains fifty tools, templates, and case studies that will help you put these ideas into action--fast!