The Business Developer's Playbook


Book Description

This book is not about selling products -- it is about selling yourself, your ideas, and your services. This book explains an innovative dialogue sales process, and the relationship sales principles that underpin it. In every sales situation, there is both a seller and a buyer and, at different times, either the buyer or the seller may take the lead. The dance they perform may or may not lead to a deal, but it will leave them knowing a little more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses. These two dancers are "connected" and follow the same steps -- The five steps they follow are to plan, connect, dialogue, record, and follow up. The five steps are the basis of the dialogue process. In addition, this book provides easy-to-follow guidance for three groups of people: 1. Professionals wanting to sell their services and improve their business development; 2. Thought leaders, change agents, innovators, entrepreneurs, senior public servants, and advocates wanting to sell their ideas to others; 3. Mid-career job seekers and recent graduates aiming to sell themselves into a dream job role either full or part-time.




Design for Software


Book Description

A unique resource to help software developers create a desirable user experience Today, top-flight software must feature a desirable user experience. This one-of-a-kind book creates a design process specifically for software, making it easy for developers who lack design background to create that compelling user experience. Appealing to both tech-savvy designers and creative-minded technologists, it establishes a hybrid discipline that will produce first-rate software. Illustrated in full color, it shows how to plan and visualize the design to create software that works on every level. Today's software demands attention to the quality of the user experience; this book guides you through a practical design process to achieve that goal Approaches the mechanics of design with a process inspired by art and science Avoids the abstract and moves step by step through techniques you can put to use immediately Covers planning your design, tested methods, how to visualize like a designer, psychology of design, and how to create software that developers will appreciate Explores such elements as choosing the right typeface and managing interactivity Design for Software: A Playbook for Developers brings the art of good design together with the science of software development to create programs with pizazz.




The Business Playbook


Book Description

Entrepreneur, CEO, or business leader: no matter your title, the success of your company is a responsibility-and weight-that lies squarely on your shoulders. In the beginning, increased control was an asset that bought you peace of mind. But now, without the structure your business needs to thrive, you're overworked, overwhelmed, and unsure of the path ahead. Fortunately, everything that makes your company work can be captured and put to work for you. In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn't rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.




Ask Your Developer


Book Description

Jeff Lawson, developer turned CEO of Twilio (one of Bloomberg Businessweek's Top 50 Companies to Watch in 2021), creates a new playbook for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization, showing how to help management utilize this coveted and valuable workforce to enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems, and drive digital transformation. From banking and retail to insurance and finance, every industry is turning digital, and every company needs the best software to win the hearts and minds of customers. The landscape has shifted from the classic build vs. buy question, to one of build vs. die. Companies have to get this right to survive. But how do they make this transition? Software developers are sought after, highly paid, and desperately needed to compete in the modern, digital economy. Yet most companies treat them like digital factory workers without really understanding how to unleash their full potential. Lawson argues that developers are the creative workforce who can solve major business problems and create hit products for customers—not just grind through rote tasks. From Google and Amazon, to one-person online software companies—companies that bring software developers in as partners are winning. Lawson shows how leaders who build industry changing software products consistently do three things well. First, they understand why software developers matter more than ever. Second, they understand developers and know how to motivate them. And third, they invest in their developers' success. As a software developer and public company CEO, Lawson uses his unique position to bridge the language and tools executives use with the unique culture of high performing, creative software developers. Ask Your Developer is a toolkit to help business leaders, product managers, technical leaders, software developers, and executives achieve their common goal—building great digital products and experiences. How to compete in the digital economy? In short: Ask Your Developer.




The Lean Product Playbook


Book Description

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.







The Async-First Playbook


Book Description

Reimagining Agile for Distributed and Remote Teams Distributed work is now inevitable, but conventional agile approaches are too "synchronous" for today's remote teams. Meetings, ceremonies, and rituals can become unsustainable when teams are scattered across the globe. The result: burnout, constant interruptions, a lack of deep work, poor work-life balance, greater frustration, and workplaces with poor diversity. In The Async-First Playbook, Thoughtworks Principal Product Manager Sumeet Gayathri Moghe provides tools and techniques to embed remote-native, asynchronous practices into traditional agile methods, making remote work more efficient, inclusive, thoughtful, and fun. Drawing on extensive experience leading distributed teams, Moghe addresses the "nuts and bolts" of specific practices and the crucial "softer" elements such as culture, mindset, and leadership. Short, practical chapters show how to adapt traditional agile techniques such as sprints and pair programming for the realities of today's distributed environments. Whatever your project, you'll learn how to create asynchronous environments that promote success, improve the workplace experience, and deliver better results. Discover why asynchronous collaboration is crucial to your project's success Learn the tools, skills, and protocols you need to get right in order to go "async-first" Map current agile techniques to async-first versions that better reflect today's realities Become a more supportive and effective leader of async-first teams Anticipate, navigate, and mitigate the pitfalls of async-first distributed work Bring it all together--walk through your async-first transition Access valuable resources, examples, and hands-on templates at the companion website "This playbook will empower you to lead and build differently. All that you need is an open mind and a belief that the status quo isn't worthy of defining the future." --From the Foreword by Darren Murph Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.




The Lean Product Playbook


Book Description

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.




Tech Leadership Playbook


Book Description




The Developer's Playbook for Large Language Model Security


Book Description

Large language models (LLMs) are not just shaping the trajectory of AI, they're also unveiling a new era of security challenges. This practical book takes you straight to the heart of these threats. Author Steve Wilson, chief product officer at Exabeam, focuses exclusively on LLMs, eschewing generalized AI security to delve into the unique characteristics and vulnerabilities inherent in these models. Complete with collective wisdom gained from the creation of the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs list—a feat accomplished by more than 400 industry experts—this guide delivers real-world guidance and practical strategies to help developers and security teams grapple with the realities of LLM applications. Whether you're architecting a new application or adding AI features to an existing one, this book is your go-to resource for mastering the security landscape of the next frontier in AI. You'll learn: Why LLMs present unique security challenges How to navigate the many risk conditions associated with using LLM technology The threat landscape pertaining to LLMs and the critical trust boundaries that must be maintained How to identify the top risks and vulnerabilities associated with LLMs Methods for deploying defenses to protect against attacks on top vulnerabilities Ways to actively manage critical trust boundaries on your systems to ensure secure execution and risk minimization