Bøker av Matt Stephens

Extensive consultation with an authenticity advocate, with whom we were connected by Inclusive Minds - the key organisation that introduces book creators to advocates with similar life experiences to those in the story. Key themes of disability, bullying, friendship and being true to yourself. Billy has cerebral palsy and he's had enough of his classmates treating him differently. But then Mia arrives and announces a school visit from her uncle: a famous footballer. Maybe being a star footballer in front of his classmates will help Billy prove that he can be just like them. But when even his hero turns out to be just as bad as the school bullies, Billy realises that perhaps he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone but himself.

"e;Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP"e; is meant to provide an independent look at Extreme Programming. It is meant to cut through the marketing hype of Extreme Programming and expose a number of weaknesses with this approach to software development. It tries to draw a distinction between true "e;agility"e; in a software process and "e;fragility"e; inherent in techniques such as oral documentation. Extreme Programming (XP) is a consummate mix of good goals, some good advice, and lots of bad advice. The goals and the good advice draw people in; the bad advice can potentially cause projects to fail. The XPers' theory is that when applied together, this mixture of rules will somehow magically be safe. XP therefore represents a high-risk process, wrapped in a "e;feel-good"e; methodology. The marketing, hype, and earnest self-assurance of its authors will convince many project leaders to try out XP on their next project. In "e;Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP"e; into a more viable process, Rosenberg and Stephens are not attempting to define a new methodology, as there are plenty of those in the World already. Instead, they will be examining XP in the context of existing methodologies and processes such as RUP, ICONIX, Spiral, RAD, DSDM, etc - and showing how XP goals can be achieved using these existing processes (with a slight emphasis on RUP and ICONIX), using software wisdom that has been tried and proven to work again and again.

How to really engage your employees and improve performance.

The groundbreaking book Design Driven Testing brings sanity back to the software development process by flipping around the concept of Test Driven Development (TDD)-restoring the concept of using testing to verify a design instead of pretending that unit tests are a replacement for design.