Book Description
âCompanies have been implementing large agile projects for a number of years, but the âstigma’ of âagile only works for small projects’ continues to be a frequent barrier for newcomers and a rallying cry for agile critics. What has been missing from the agile literature is a solid, practical book on the specifics of developing large projects in an agile way. Dean Leffingwell’s book
Scaling Software Agility fills this gap admirably. It offers a practical guide to large project issues such as architecture, requirements development, multi-level release planning, and team organization. Leffingwell’s book is a necessary guide for large projects and large organizations making the transition to agile development.â
–Jim Highsmith, director, Agile Practice, Cutter Consortium, author of Agile Project Management
âThere’s tension between building software fast and delivering software that lasts, between being ultra-responsive to changes in the market and maintaining a degree of stability. In his latest work,
Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell shows how to achieve a pragmatic balance among these forces. Leffingwell’s observations of the problem, his advice on the solution, and his description of the resulting best practices come from experience: he’s been there, done that, and has seen what’s worked.â
–Grady Booch, IBM Fellow
Agile development practices, while still controversial in some circles, offer undeniable benefits: faster time to market, better responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and higher quality. However, agile practices have been defined and recommended primarily to small teams. In
Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell describes how agile methods can be applied to enterprise-class development.
- Part I provides an overview of the most common and effective agile methods.
- Part II describes seven best practices of agility that natively scale to the enterprise level.
- Part III describes an additional set of seven organizational capabilities that companies can master to achieve the full benefits of software agility on an enterprise scale.
This book is invaluable to software developers, testers and QA personnel, managers and team leads, as well as to executives of software organizations whose objective is to increase the quality and productivity of the software development process but who are faced with all the challenges of developing software on an enterprise scale.
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Part I: Overview of Software Agility
Chapter 1: Introduction to Agile Methods
Chapter 2: Why the Waterfall Model Doesn’t Work
Chapter 3: The Essence of XP
Chapter 4: The Essence of Scrum
Chapter 5: The Essence of RUP
Chapter 6: Lean Software, DSDM, and FDD
Chapter 7: The Essence of Agile
Chapter 8: The Challenge of Scaling Agile
Part II: Seven Agile Team Practices That Scale
Chapter 9: The Define/Build/Test Component Team
Chapter 10: Two Levels of Planning and Tracking
Chapter 11: Mastering the Iteration
Chapter 12: Smaller, More Frequent Releases
Chapter 13: Concurrent Testing
Chapter 14: Continuous Integration
Chapter 15: Regular Reflection and Adaptation
Part III: Creating the Agile Enterprise
Chapter 16: Intentional Architecture
Chapter 17: Lean Requirements at Scale: Vision, Roadmap, and Just-in-Time Elaboration
Chapter 18: Systems of Systems and the Agile Release Train
Chapter 19: Managing Highly Distributed Development
Chapter 20: Impact on Customers and Operations
Chapter 21: Changing the Organization
Chapter 22: Measuring Business Performance
Conclusion: Agility Works at Scale
Bibliography
Index
Customer Reviews:
For deploying Agile methodologies in large-scale organisations.......2007-09-26
Having read a lot of material on Agile, and employed it in practice for quite a number of years, it is refreshing to see a book take a very pragmatic approach to deploying Agile techniques in large-scale organisations.
Many other books on the subject fail to go beyond the team-context, whereas that is the precise aim of this book. The book can be used as a thorough guideline for deploying Agile methods into an established organisation, pointing out which methods are the foundation of Agile, and which can be used to build on top.
The author has a profound insight in organisational structures and how to employ the Agile methods in conjunction with external processes, such as roadmapping, in a constructive rather than conflicting manner.
On top of all of this, the author has actually practiced what he preaches and proven that his methods work by deploying this to BMC Software and other software manufacturers.
A foundation for understanding .......2007-07-08
Agile development practices involving bringing products to market quicker, making it easier to adapt to the rapid changes consumers bring to the software environment, and SCALING SOFTWARE AGILITY: BEST PRACTICES FOR LARGE ENTERPRISES is a key to understanding effective agile methods and how they translate in a business environment. Developers, testers and QA personnel, including managers, will find this an excellent survey of best practices which will prove advanced software libraries with a foundation for understanding the methods and importance of agile routines.
great book on enterprise agile.......2007-06-15
Very useful advice and learnings on how to apply agile development to the enterprise from someone who has obviously really used it. Offers solutions to typical problems of scaling up agile development, like creating "architectural runway" and a "scrum of scrums" for project management of large projects.
Great book for large scale agile projects.......2007-06-05
Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises successfully answers the question how do you take what works in Agile and apply that to large enterprises and projects. As a development manager who deals mostly in large scale projects I found the book an interesting analysis on how agile approaches can successfully be applied to large projects. Many of the approaches described by Dean I had already discovered, some other approaches described provided new insights to managing large projects.
One of my biggest complaints with Agile these days is most people do not fully understand what it really means. The end result is you get developers and tech leads arguing that they don't need to document their processes nor analyze their situation all they need to do is write code to get the benefits of Agile. I would guess that Dean has encountered the same situation with his projects as a full 94 pages in the book describe very well the different flavors of Agile including XP, Scrum, RUP, and Lean.
After ensuring the reader has an understanding of Agile, the book then transitions into the meat of the topic by discussing the 7 Agile team practices that scale.
- Define/Build/Test Component team
- Two levels of planning and tracking
- Mastering the iteration
- Smaller, more frequent releases
- Concurrent testing
- Continuous Integration
- Regular introspection and adaptation to new approaches
The author points out how these traditional agile topics can be successfully applied to large scale organizations and projects.
The author then wraps up the book with an excellent description of how you work Agile into the overall Enterprise. Pointing out how Agile actually provides more development structure which actually reduces cost, improves quality, and empowers developers to succeed.
Overall this is one of the best Agile software development management books I have read and would recommend this strongly to others.
A valuable book no matter where you are on the road to Agility.......2007-05-13
Dean is an excellent writer covering complex concepts in a simple, concise manner. The effective use of diagrams is very helpful. No matter where your organization is in the implementation of Agile, there is something that you can learn from this book. It can be read cover to cover and also used as a reference book when you are faced with challenges in maximizing the agility of your organization.
The final chapters on the impacts of agile development on the rest of the organization and the right business metrics for an Agile Balanced Scorecard are my favorites. They offer practical ideas for measuring an Agile organization. I highly recommend this book for anyone in an Agile (or wanting to be Agile) organization.
Book Description
Slow websites infuriate users. Lots of people can visit your web site or use your web application - but you have to be prepared for those visitors, or they won't come back. Your sites need to be built to withstand the problems success creates.
Building Scalable Web Sites looks at a variety of techniques for creating sites which can keep users cheerful even when there are thousands or millions of them. Flickr.com developer, Cal Henderson, explains how to build sites so that large numbers of visitors can enjoy them. Henderson examines techniques that go beyond sheer speed, exploring how to coordinate developers, support international users, and integrate with other services from email to SOAP to RSS to the APIs exposed by many Ajax-based web applications.
This book uncovers the secrets that you need to know for back-end scaling, architecture and failover so your websites can handle countless requests. You'll learn how to take the "poor man's web technologies" - Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP or other scripting languages - and scale them to compete with established "store bought" enterprise web technologies. Toward the end of the book, you'll discover techniques for keeping web applications running with event monitoring and long-term statistical tracking for capacity planning.
If you're about to build your first dynamic website, then Building Scalable Web Sites isn't for you. But if you're an advanced developer who's ready to realize the cost and performance benefits of a comprehensive approach to scalable applications, then let your fingers do the walking through this convenient guide.
Customer Reviews:
Building web-scale applications.......2007-04-19
Given the complexity of addressing 'scalability', Cal Henderson has done an amazing job of producing 348 information packed pages that will keep you glued to the end. This book is a ground up overview of the construction, security, architecture, monitoring, and yes, even scaling processes. Rarely do I find technology books that are cover-to-cover material, but this one had me asking for more, chapter after chapter. Given the scope, some of the sections are brief, but they give you just enough to kick-start your research and fill in the blanks.
If you're wondering which tools the big players use, how they scale their databases, how they monitor their servers, or even how they go about their daily life - this book is worth every penny.
Excellent, although written for the LAMP stack.......2007-03-27
I liked the scope and thoroughness of this book, although I wish it had a little more information about writing web applications for the Windows/IIS/SQL Server/C# approach (WISC?), rather than Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP).
Great chapter about internationalization, by the way. I've never seen a better description of UTF.
A place to start and return often.......2007-01-03
If you are a new web developer this is a survey course in what you need to know. Unfortunately if are a new web developer you probably won't get 3/4rs of what Henderson has to say. He doesn't really get into detail with any single topic in the book... leaving it to the reader to find more information later. None the less, no matter where you are on the learning curve, I consider this a vital part of any developer's library. Buy this tomb, read it in chunks if you're new and if not reread chapters at a time for inspiration of what you could be doing better.
VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!.......2006-12-03
Do you have just a little experience with building dynamic web sites or applications? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Cal Henderson, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that is primarily about web application design.
Henderson, begins by looking at some general software design principles for web applications and how they apply to real world problems. Then, the author gets you quickly up to speed with the issues involved with internationalization and localization, and suggests simple ways to solve them. Next, he deals with the integrity of the data received and stored by your application. He also looks at what receiving e-mail can add to an application, how to implement e-mail receiving semantics, and the various pitfalls that occur along the way. The author then continues by dealing with protocols, formats, and strategies for exchanging data between two or more components in a web application. Then, he looks at techniques for identifying and fixing bottlenecks in your architecture, both before they happen and when they start to bog your systems down. Finally, the author looks at the techniques for scaling each area of your application.
This most excellent book looks at application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructural work. Perhaps more importantly, this book is about the development of web applications.
Best Advanced Web Apps Book. Ever.......2006-11-11
This book, written by the lead developer of always-popular and it is quite possibly the best book (from a PHP/MySQL web app developer's perspective) ever written. If all of this knowledge comes direct from Cal Henderson's head then he's clearly a *very* clever guy.
Covering everything from basic MVC concepts, bottle-neck analysis, code profiling and coding style through to network design, protocol choice and security, this book is really quite amazing in how much useful information it manages to pack into such a deceptively small book. I found myself highlighting large portions of entire pages and then realized that there wasn't much point because the whole thing deserved highlighting.
If you're using PHP and MySQL (in particular) to build web-based applications that might one day serve more than a couple people - you should get this book and read it cover to cover.
Book Description
A best-seller in its
First Edition,
Scale Development: Theory and Applications, Second Edition has been extensively updated and revised to address changes in the field and topics that have grown in importance since the
First Edition. Widely adopted for graduate courses in departments such as Psychology, Public Health, Marketing, Nursing, and Education, this book will prove beneficial to applied researchers across the social sciences.
New to the Second Edition:
- Figures and practical tips for students
- New section on face validity (Chapter 4)
- Substantially expanded presentation of factor analysis (Chapter 6)
- New chapter (7) on item response theory (IRT)
- Coverage of qualitative procedures and issues related to differential item functioning (Chapter 8)
Praise for the First Edition:
"Very readable, well organized, and straightforward. I would recommend this book for practitioners, graduate students, and faculty members who are seeking a practical, rather than a psychometric, treatment of scale development. This book offers a clear overview for those interested in the development and validation of measurement scales."
--EVALUATION PRACTICE
Customer Reviews:
Practical introduction to measurement issues.......2006-11-24
This book is a beautifully written account of measurement issues in the social sciences. It is a great resource for anyone who is interested in developing their own instrument or who would like to learn more about measurement theory.
clear but a little simplistic.......2006-03-16
This is a nice resource for researchers completely unfamiliar with the process of measure development. The biggest limitation of the book is that it falls short in actually presenting equations for the statistics mentioned. Thus, it is a good place to start if you have little exposure to this process. However, if you plan on actually running a series of studies to create a new measure, then you'll want to augment this book with some real statistics books.
Scale Development : Theory and Applications (Applied Social Research Methods).......2005-10-03
This book was very helpful, although it does get a bit technical when it comes to the statistical explanations. For non-statisticians, it might be a bit difficult to understand. However, overall it is a good resource to have when designing a health survey.
Very helpful resource.......2005-08-25
This short volume is an excellent overview of how to create scales and indexes from survey items. The author assumes familiarity with the concepts behind reliability and validity, so the book is best used a supplement to an already developed measurement foundation. I highly recommend adding this to your reference library, I am sure you will refer to it throughout your career.
Nice overview of the scale construction process.......2004-10-03
If you've never developed scales for survey research before, this is probably one of the most readable and actionable books describing the process step by step. Browse through it in your local library before you buy a copy. Highly recommended.
Book Description
The classic text is Psychometric Theory. Like the previous edition, this text is designed as a comprehensive text in measurement for researchers and for use in graduate courses in psychology, education and areas of business such as management and marketing. It is intended to consider the broad measurement problems that arise in these areas and is written for a reader who needs only a basic background in statistics to comprehend the material. It also combines classical procedures that explain variance with modern inferential procedures.
Customer Reviews:
Purchase the 2nd Edition.......2007-06-15
As have several other people who have reviewed this book I would suggest purchasing the 2nd edition. I have both of them sitting side by side on a shelf and use the 2nd edition much more than I use the 3rd one. It is not written in as clear a manner as the 2nd edition and sought to expand beyond psychometric theory which might have watered it down some. I was surprised that the reviewer who wrote that the 3rd edition is longer than the 2nd is correct as the 2nd is thicker - but it does have fewer pages.
I would give it -5 starts if possible.......2007-01-29
This is not really a book. It's more like a composition notebook with definitions of terms on the even-number pages and, you bet, ruled spaces on the odd-number side. So this 103-page "book" is more like 51 pages (translation - you get only 50% for what you paid). Another reviewer said it's more like a Cliff Notes of the original book. Even that is too flattering. It's not even a Cliff Notes because what are on the left side (the even-number pages) are just definitions of terms taken from the textbook. There is no structure or organziation. So you cannot even tell how those terms relate to each other. I was actually looking for a Cliff Notes of Psychometric Theory, so it doesn't bother me it's not the real textbook. But in this form this book is totally useless. I could teach a monkey to copy all the terms and definitions from the textbook and publish a book like this and make some easy money. An outrageous rip-off! Stay away from all books in this Cram101 series. If you "cram" like this you probably will fail all your exams! I'm an college instructor myself and I will never test my students on how good they remember defintions in the book. At the very least learning is about understanding of the relationships between the terms.
THIS LISTING IS MISREPRESENTATIVE.......2006-09-03
I ordered this book, thinking that it was the text book (as the title of the listing suggests). My mistake not to read all the way to the bottom of the page where the true nature of this publication is finally revealed, but SHAME ON AMAZON for listing it this way. There is nothing in the actual listing of this book that suggests that it is merely a "cliffs notes" guide to the book itself. I now have to scramble to find the correct book. When you're looking for textbooks, most of us look at the title, the author and the correct edition, which this listing contains at the very top. Thanks, Amazon, for taking advantage of those of us who are too busy to read the fine print!
comprehensive but jumbled.......2006-03-16
This is one of the landmark Measurement books for Psychologists. It does present a relatively comprehensive treatment of the issues facing researchers when developing measures. Unfortunately, the style of writing used in the book makes it exceedingly difficult for students to extract the useful information from the chapters. Specifically, the chapters are not particularly well organized - particularly the ones with fewer equations in them - often jumping back and forth between topics rather than presenting them more systematically. Furthermore, the prose explaning concepts and equations is basically written in an overly complex and sometimes cryptic style more appropriate for mathematicians and psychologists from the 1950's than for graduate students or modern consumers. I only bought the book to augment the graduate level measurement class that I teach and despite the fact that I have a solid background in mathematics, I grown inwardly every time I have to pick up a chapter in this book and read it.
get the 2nd edition.......2005-02-06
I am in a management PhD program and we have to read this book for our required class in psychometric theory. I totally agree with one of the other reviewers that almost no term is clearly defined by Nunnally and Bernstein in this 3rd edition. The book goes on and on and on talking about validity, reliability, scaling, ... without defining any single term in a concise manner. It is very frustrating!
So, my suggestion for everyone is to get the 2nd edition. I read it and was happily surprised. Nunnally is great, Ira Bernstein messed the 3rd edition up (Nunnally died a while ago and Bernstein was responsible for the writing of this edition). The previous edition is much, much shorter and has better organized chapters that go right to the point (well, relatively speaking ). In addition, I recommend several short Sage books (e.g., factor analysis from Kim and Mueller), which are much clearer.
In any case, this book or better the 2nd edition, is a must have for any social science researcher (or wanna be researcher ).
Average customer rating:
- Very Disappointing
- Ok, I can see where....
- Trash it! Better yet ...... BURN IT!
- Basic
- Take Back Your Time
|
LIVING THE SIMPLE LIFE: A GUIDE TO SCALING DOWN AND ENJOYING MORE
Elaine St. James
Manufacturer: Hyperion
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ASIN: 0786882425 |
Customer Reviews:
Very Disappointing.......2007-08-29
Initially the book started out okay and seemed to be quite intersting. Regular common sense stuff.
But then the author started to become aggravating.
Telling you that it's okay to put off your weekly laundry tasks and wear a dirty shirt with a ring around the collar to work. "If people think ya stink,..then just go stand down wind so the wind blows your body stench away from them".
Then she started yacking about not bothering to clean the house "as often" as usual. Also don't bother if the glasses, plates and cups aren't clean.
The way I saw it her idea of "Simplifying" your life meant that it's okay to be a lazy slob.
The book is a joke. I hope this author gets into financial difficulty and HAS TO go back to a regular day job and doing an honest day's work instead of fleecing the American middle class of it's hard earned pennies by selling this junk which promises a bunch of stuff but does not deliver.
Buy yourself a good CD or DVD rather than spend your hard earned cash on this sorry excuse of a book.
1 STAR.....and that's being generous.
Ok, I can see where...........2007-07-24
Ok, I can see where some of the info and advice in this book could be benefecial and useful. Im not a Buddist or anything, but living life without unnessary clutter can have its rewards also. Im not talking about being poor either. How much crap do we need in our lives until we cant even walk thru our house anymore without bumping into stuff, collecting dust. I agree with alot of stuff inthis book, but some things are a little to far out there. Like having only one knife, one fork, etc...and some other stuff like that. Take what you want to from this book, and cast the rest aside...
Trash it! Better yet ...... BURN IT!.......2005-07-12
This "simplification" book was written by a woman whose idea of simplifying is driving a BMW and getting her exercise by taking walks on the beach. That is unless she is walking in the park, then she will let her dog sniff for a while and then leave him in a hot parked car to finish her "brisk" one mile walk herself.
The entire first half of the book seems to be talking you into "getting started" simplifying your life. If I needed talked into it, I wouldn't have bought the book now would I? Also during this time, she states that you must do whatever it takes to free up time to "start" this process including lying to your boss by using sick days when you are obviously not sick.
Apparently, marriage is also not a sacred thing to Ms. St. James as there were several references to it being possibly beneficial to dump your mate or your spouse due to incompatibility in the simplification area. Yes, she used the word ..... DUMP!
To curtail your spending habits, she suggests keeping a 30 day list with you and when you see something you want, don't buy it right away but write it down on your list along with the day's date. If you look at your list 30 days from then and still want it, then it's okay to buy it. My advice? Forget the list ...... wait a month. If you can't remember wanting it, you didn't really need it in the first place!
Most disturbing was her obvious disregard for others. Here's her advice on declining an invitation to a party or other social function: "There'll be enough people who show up because they want to be there, so you don't need to feel YOU have to. Of course, if no one shows up at all, perhaps it's an indication that the gathering wasn't necessary in the first place."
Here's her advice for turning down a neighbor's invitation for coffee: "Put your foot down and keep putting it down until they get the picture. 'Blanche, I'm starting a new project next week and won't be able to do coffee with you for a while. I'll give you a call when my schedule frees up.' When Blanche shows up anyway, be firm and persistent. 'Blanche, maybe I didn't make myself clear the other day, but remember I'm starting my
new schedule today. I don't have time to visit now. I'll call you later.'" What happens, Ms. St. James, if Blanche is an old woman who lived for that daily companionship? For just a half hour or so of your time to know that someone cared?
Her advice for staying in touch by phone is to inform everyone you know to leave messages on machines rather than picking up the phone and actually talking to each other ..... that would apparently be a waste of time (think of it as audio E-mail she says).
There is also a frightening letter included in the book from a 14 year old boy who was obviously searching for the meaning of life and battling depression and the advice he got from one of her books was to "look inside himself for strength and to get in touch with his inner self."
She informs us that she is an avid reader and has an extensive book collection which I would hazard a guess doesn't contain a Bible!
Basic.......2005-06-03
St. James expands on the idea of creating a happier life through simplicity. She teaches readers to change their focus from gaining money to achieving a simpler existence. She fails to address exercise or spirituality.
Take Back Your Time.......2005-04-02
Elaine St. James has come a long way since her days as a real estate investor. One day she realized her life was too busy and complicated. By cutting back on work and eliminating physical and mental clutter, she was able to focus on what mattered most in her life.
Living the Simple Life features feedback from readers of the author's previous works. My favorite comes from David, a 42 year-old teacher who now can fit all his possessions into eight boxes. He works as a private rich-kid tutor two hours a day, four days a week. In all his free time he does volunteer work with underprivileged kids.
Living the Simple Life is written on level ground with information regular folks can apply to their lives. Not only is Living the Simple Life an ideal asset to your personal library, it also makes an easy and helpful gift. Pair it up with any of the book in Elaine St. James series for a revolutionary and refreshing life change.
Book Description
All new or new uses of previously developed scales in consumer behavior and advertising that appeared between 1998 and 2001. 654 scales are presented along with a description, the origin of the scale, reliability, validity, and other useful information for the academic and professional researcher. This volume includes two indices: by author and by publication.
Book Description
How to make more of less-the book that shows how to simplify your life, control clutter, and pare down your possessions for a move into smaller living quarters.There are plenty of anti-clutter experts around ready to exhort us to sort, store, and trash our belongings, but this is the first book to address the specific needs of people moving from a larger to a smaller space, or merging two (or more) people's possessions into a single abode.If you and your mate are about to swap your large, single-family house for a condo, or move your parents out of the family home of 40 years into an assisted-living center, where do you start? How do you decide what to take, what to leave behind, and what to do with your discards? What can you do to keep the move from seeming tinged with loss?Scaling Down not only offers terrific nuts-and-bolts strategies for paring down one's belongings to only the best and most meaningful items, but it also addresses the emotional aspects of streamlining-the complicated relationship we have with our "stuff." Countering the pervasive American prejudice that having less is a step down, the authors advance their concept of "living large wherever you are!"
Customer Reviews:
great, practical book.......2007-09-24
It took me less than a week to read this book and gave me a lot of really good ideas, even about things unrelated to the topic. Highly recommended if you are having to move, if you are dealing with an estate situation or if you just need to simplify your life!
Best decluttering book for my situation.......2007-05-25
While this book is about getting rid of clutter, it stands out from similar books because it focuses on positive reasons to get rid of extra stuff, such as moving to a smaller, more manageable home. I have read many books about clutter. Most of them are either really about finding suitable containers for stuff, or about getting rid of stuff for very vague, intangible reasons ("your clutter is weighing you down" sort of new-age reasoning).
We are moving from a 4000-square-foot house to one 1400 square feet or smaller in order to save money and conserve energy. This book is the first one that has inspired me to be tough in paring down our stuff to the point where we won't be squashing it into our new place. It has also given me clear steps on how to do this.
Like another reviewer, I really wish this book had a section on choosing which children's items to get rid of, or how to cope with a spouse who is reluctant to declutter. (This is the reason I'm giving the book four stars rather than five.) However, the lessons I learned by reading the book (such as skimming the cream off the top--choosing the best items in any category and getting rid of the rest) will be helpful in the first area. As for the second, well, maybe I can get my husband to read this.
Practical Approach to Residential Downsizing.......2007-05-08
Although this book is aimed at baby boomers who are down sizing, it is full of simple, practical suggestions for a myriad of situations. Not only do the authors deal with the physical stuff but they also deal with the emotional side of the letting go. In addition to having some great cartoons, the book is written in a conversational tone and with a great deal of humor as exemplified by a chapter entitled "The Secret Life of Clothing".
SCALING down is divided into five parts. In Part 1, the Challenges of Scaling Down, the authors discuss the nature of clutter including a quiz entitled "How Stuffed Are You?" They then present their approach, which is to develop with the client a simple mission statement that includes obstacles, as in "I need (or want) to _________________ but _____________. They then present 21 obstacles, excuses and fears and provide suggestions on helping the client past each of them.
In Part 2, "The Culprits", the authors deal with the major issues of paper, clothing, gifts and what they call the `tyranny' of collections'. A simple filing system is suggested for a more simple lifestyle. Judi & Marj discuss how to help a recent retiree pare down "the physical evidence of a lifetime of work" in a compassionate and respectful manner. Since guilt is usually associated with getting rid of items that were gifts from others, the authors present options for getting past the guilt. They analyze the `why' of collecting and suggest ways to lead the client to the `better' not `bigger' collection.
Special Situations are dealt with in Part 3. The task of clearing out a family home covers numerous issues from family dynamics and old hurts to allowing enough time and getting items successfully distributed to their intended new homes. In the chapter called "Your Cuisinart or Mine?", the authors deal with blending households as well as separating households. As in other Parts, Marj and Judi deal not only with the physical stuff but also handling the emotional issues involved in these emotionally charged situations.
Although the Part 4 Scaling Down Strategies, such as skimming and triage, are pretty familiar, they also discuss the psychology of shopping. Additionally there is a whole chapter dedicated to helping clients cull through their life's memorabilia and enable the client to keep only that which is truly significant to their lives. They also provide a list of 28 techniques to prevent the return of clutter.
The final part of the book deals with the rewards of living in a smaller space and emphasizes the avoidance of the bigger is better mentality that surrounds us in today's culture. Their definition of what a home should be sums it up. "Your own home...is a backdrop to help your life flow smoothly and provide comfort and self-expression---not be an end in itself."
Excellent without children, but..........2006-12-13
I really enjoyed this book,having ready lot about simplicity. However, the end about living simple, doesn't apply to family with children. So if you are a couple or an empty nester, it's the best book on living simpily I have read. Otherwise, find a supplement for the REST of us with kids.
Downsizing your home.......2006-11-01
This is a GREAT book if you're planning on moving into a smaller space. It really helps you organize your stuff and how to do it. I bought it to help me organize my stuff in a bedroom, which is where I live and work. Also to help me organize my various and numerous hobbies. I find it a valuable book which I keep handy. I recommend it if the above reasons fit you. Also it's very easy to read.
Book Description
Drawing from the information presented at conference sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Technology in Education Consortium, leading educators, researchers, and policymakers, Scaling Up Success translate, theory into practice and provide, a hands-on resource that clearly describes different models for “scaling up” success. This important resource is filled with illustrative examples of best practices that are grounded in real-life case studies of technology-based educational innovation¾from networking a failing school district in New Jersey to using computer visualization to teach scientific inquiry in Chicago. Scaling Up Success show how the lessons learned from technology-based educational innovation can be applied to other school improvement efforts.
Book Description
Complications arising from incomplete or missing records, census irregularities and individuals of the same name occur more often than non-genealogists might think. The author, a respected genealogist, helps intermediate to advanced researchers break through these "brick walls" by breaking down each researcher's common problem into a chapter with straightforward solutions. Readers will: Go straight to the answers they need without wading through theory or irrelevant records overviews; Find explanations and case studies easily understood and useful for intermediate or advanced genealogists; Learn what NOT to do in research to avoid hitting brick walls in the future. The result is the best and most accessible book on the market about overcoming obstacles, from Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree Books, the sources of genealogy's most popular publications.
Customer Reviews:
Brick Walls.......2007-09-22
This book is excellent to assist the serious genealogist. It requires some dedication to follow through the suggestions but if you do, you will learn a lot. Unfortunately, for all my dedication, I still have not uncovered my paternal grandfather's secrets. But I have not finished traveling all the paths the book suggests. Some I have, some are still waiting. I would recommend the book to give you a serious and straight forward path to follow rather than randomly searching.
Help! Brick walls.......2007-07-31
I am sure that this book will prove very useful in my genealogy research. It is easy to follow with good examples.
Geneology - Brick Walls.......2007-06-09
This book is full of info to help you know the next step in trying to find a relative through non traditional methods. I originally got the book at the library, and I found I needed to buy the book - so I could highlight and mark it for future reference. Great resource!
Too narrow in focus, and dated........2006-11-18
If your brick walls are the immigrant generation, do yourself a favor and get a book specializing in that country's research rather than this one. Despite the 2005 copyright, the majority of the advice would have still held true a decade ago. And the emphasis on early American record issues is a real minus for those with later arriving ancestors. Despite the introduction's suggestion, the problem-solving techniques alone weren't worth the lack of examples in my problem areas.
However, if you've been working on your genealogy for decades, need a refresher, and are working on your DAR application... you might love this book.
Excellent.......2006-04-01
Excellent book on solving the problem of tracing family history. As with any research the first step it to simply get started. Other helpful resources are "Trees That Grow Families" by Brison West and "Iowa Harvest" a book about families that settled in Iowa. A neat site is www.lesanville.com which includes books by Harold Barts, Greg Lesan, Brianna Lesan-Barts, and Francis Lesan-Brooks. Many of these writers are published in other counties and may be hard to locate, but if you can find their books they are worth the read. Good luck.
Average customer rating:
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Goal Attainment Scaling: Applications, Theory, and Measurement
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0898598893 |
Book Description
There is an extensive literature on Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS), but the publications are widely scattered and often inaccessible, covering several foreign countries and many professional disciplines and fields of application. This book provides both a user manual and a complete reference work on GAS, including a comprehensive account of what the method is, what its strengths and limitations are, how it can be used, and what it can offer. The book is designed to be of interest to service providers, program directors and administrators, service and business organizations, program evaluators, researchers, and students in a variety of fields. br br No previous account of GAS has provided an up-to-date, comprehensive description and explanation of the technique. The chapters include a basic "how to do it" handbook, step-by-step implementation instructions, frequently occurring problems and what should be done about them, methods for monitoring the quality of the goal setting process, and a discussion of policy and administration issues. There are many illustrations from actual applications including examples of goals scaled for the individual, the specific program, the agency, or the total system. Procedures for training and estimates of training costs are also provided. br
Customer Reviews:
The Best!.......2006-04-10
If one accepts the notion that the concepts "qualitative" and "quantitative" fall on a relative continuum, Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) is the most universally applicable evaluation protocol available to human service practitioners. One can conceptualize problematic issues on a simple ordinal scale, and quantify them.
Although the GOAL ATTAINMENT SCALING: APPLICATIONS, THEORY AND MEASUREMENT is over 10 years old, it is the single best source for comprehending the practicality of GAS. It offers 11 chapters with varying degrees of complexity. The chapters are entitled:
1. Introduction and Overview
2. Illustrations of Goal Setting
3. Goal Setting, Follow-Up, and Goal Monitoring
4. Applications of Goal Attainment Scaling
5. Training in Goal Attainment Scaling
6. Implementing Goal Attainment Scaling
7. Historical Perspective
8. Conceptual Background
9. Psychometric Issues
10. Reliability of Goal Attainment Scores
11. Perspectives on Validity
Thus, the book is useful for those who are beginners in addition to those who wish the employ GAS for advanced research.
Anyone who is serious about using GAS with clients should have a copy of this book.
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