Ex-deniable operator Nick Stone seems to be living his dream not a care in the world as he steers his camper van round the surfing & parachuting paradise of Australia a board on the roof a freefall rig behind him & a beautiful young backpacker at his side. But when he sees a news report of the massacre of women & children in a terrorist outrage the other side of the world long-suppressed memories are triggered & Nick knows he must risk everything to repay a longstanding debt of friendship. As events unfold in the bleak medieval villages of Georgia & teeming streets of modern Istanbul Nick finds himself catapulted once more into the murky clandestine world he thought hed left behind
- a world in the grip of nameless enemies who linger in the shadows & stalk the corridors of power... Hurtled at breakneck pace through a deadly landscape of greed violence & ever-shifting allegiances the reader will be left in no doubt that Mc Nab is the master of the genre
- & Aggressor" shows Mc Nab at his searing blockbusting best."

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A sneak peek at up-&-coming trends in IT a multidimensional vision for achieving business agility through agile architectures The Agile Architecture Revolution places IT trends into the context of Enterprise Architecture reinventing Enterprise Architecture to support continuous business transformation. It focuses on the challenges of large organizations while placing such organizations into the broader business ecosystem that

Includes:: small & midsize organizations as well as startups. Organizes the important trends that are facing technology in businesses & public sector organizations today & over the next several years Presents the five broad organizing principles called Supertrends: location independence global cubicle democratization of technology deep interoperability & complex systems engineering Provides a new perspective on service-oriented architecture in conjunction with architectural approaches to cloud computing & mobile technologies that explain how organizations can achieve better business visibility through IT & enterprise architecture Laying out a multidimensional vision for achieving agile architectures this book discusses the crisis points that promise sudden transformative change unraveling how organizations' spending on IT will continue to undergo radical change over the next ten years.

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The First Guide to Scrum-Based Agile Product Management In Agile Product Management with Scrum leading Scrum consultant Roman Pichler uses real-world examples to demonstrate how product owners can create successful products with Scrum. He describes a broad range of agile product management practices including making agile product discovery work taking advantage of emergent requirements creating the minimal marketable product leveraging early customer feedback & working closely with the development team. Benefitting from Pichler's extensive experience you'll learn how Scrum product ownership differs from traditional product management & how to avoid & overcome the common challenges that Scrum product owners face. Coverage

Includes:: * Understanding the product owner's role: what product owners do how they do it & the surprising implications * Envisioning the product: creating a compelling product vision to galvanize & guide the team & stakeholders * Grooming the product backlog: managing the product backlog effectively even for the most complex products * Planning the release: bringing clarity to scheduling budgeting & functionality decisions * Collaborating in sprint meetings: understanding the product owner's role in sprint meetings including the dos & don'ts * Transitioning into product ownership: succeeding as a product owner & establishing the role in the enterprise This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who works as a product owner or expects to do so as well as executives & coaches interested in establishing agile product management.

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Be flexible & faster with Agile project management As mobile & web technologies continue to evolve rapidly there is added pressure to develop & implement software projects in weeks instead of months. Agile Project Management For Dummies can make that happen. This is the first book to provide a simple step-by-step guide to Agile Project Management approaches tools & techniques. With the fast pace of mobile & web technology development software project development must keep pace; Agile Project Management enables developers to complete & implement projects more quickly & this book shows you how. Offers a practical context for understanding & applying Agile techniques moving from theory into actual practice Explains when to use Agile & how to avoid common pitfalls Written by experts who know how to apply the principles in real-world situations Agile Project Management For Dummies enables you to understand & apply Agile principles for faster more accurate development. ...

The rules & practices for Scrum a simple process for managing complex projects are few straightforward & easy to learn. But Scrum s simplicity itself its lack of prescription can be disarming & new practitioners often find themselves reverting to old project management habits & tools & yielding lesser results. In this illuminating series of case studies Scrum co-creator & evangelist Ken Schwaber identifies the real-world lessons the successes & failures culled from his years of experience coaching companies in agile project management. Through them you ll understand how to use Scrum to solve complex problems & drive better results delivering more valuable software faster. Gain the foundation in Scrum theory & practice you need to: Rein in even the most complex unwieldy projects Effectively manage unknown or changing product requirements Simplify the chain of command with self-managing development teams Receive clearer specifications & feedback from customers Greatly reduce project planning time & required tools Build & release products in 30-day cycles so clients get deliverables earlier Avoid missteps by regularly inspecting reporting on & fine-tuning projects Support multiple teams working on a large-scale project from many geographic locations Maximize return on investment! ...

Agile Software Development is a highly stimulating & rich book. The author has a deep background & gives us a tour de force of the emerging agile methods." -Tom Gilb The agile model of software development has taken the world by storm. Now in Agile Software Development Second Edition one of agile's leading pioneers updates his Jolt Productivity award-winning book to reflect all that's been learned about agile development since its original introduction. Alistair Cockburn begins by updating his powerful model of software development as a "cooperative game of invention & communication." Among the new ideas he introduces: harnessing competition without damaging collaboration; learning lessons from lean manufacturing; & balancing strategies for communication. Cockburn also explains how the cooperative game is played in business & on engineering projects not just software development Next he systematically illuminates the agile model shows how it has evolved & answers the questions developers & project managers ask most often including * Where does agile development fit in our organization? * How do we blend agile ideas with other ideas? * How do we extend agile ideas more broadly? Cockburn takes on crucial misconceptions that cause agile projects to fail. For example you'll learn why encoding project management strategies into fixed processes can lead to ineffective strategy decisions & costly mistakes. You'll also find a thoughtful discussion of the controversial relationship between agile methods & user experience design. Cockburn turns to the practical challenges of constructing agile methodologies for your own teams. You'll learn how to tune & continuously reinvent your methodologies & how to manage incomplete communication. This edition contains important new contributions on these & other topics: * Agile & CMMI * Introducing agile from the top down * Revisiting "custom contracts" * Creating change with "stickers" In addition Cockburn updates his discussion of the Crystal methodologies which utilize his "cooperative game" as their central metaphor. If you're new to agile development this book will help you succeed the first time out. If you've used agile methods before Cockburn's techniques will make you even more effective." ...

Agincourt took place on 25 October 1415 & was a turning-point not only in the Hundred Years War between England & France but also in the history of weaponry. Azincourt (as it is now) is in the Pas-de-Calais & the French were famously defeated by an army led by Henry V. Henry Vs stunning victory revived Englands military prestige & greatly strengthened his territorial claims in France. The exhausted English army of about 9 000 men was engaged by 20 000 Frenchmen but the limited space of battle favoured the more compact English forces. The undisciplined charges of the French combined with the exceptional skill of the English archers contributed to a pivotal moment in European warfare. Not more than 1 600 English soldiers died; the French probably lost more than 6 000 men. Juliet Barkers shimmeringly brilliant narrative commemorates & analyses a canonical battle in British history. ...

Agnes Grey is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated intellectually stagnant & emotionally starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a deeply personal novel written from the author's own experience & as such Agnes Grey has a power & poignancy which mark it out as a landmark work of literature dealing with the social & moral evolution of English society during the last century. ...

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income & assert her independence. But Agnes enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children & then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience Anne Brontes first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society. ...

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess. This is a personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried educated women in Victorian society. Agnes Grey" is undoubtedtedly a deeply personal novel in which Anne Bronte views on the contemporary issue of the treatment of governesses as well as her passionate religious sympathies find very deliberate expression; but she also touches on issues of moral behaviour moral responsibility & individual integrity & its survival." ...