The End of Assembly Line Management We’re in the midst of a revolution. Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people’s behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders. This is no mere tech issue. The transformation requires a complete rethinking of the way we organize and manage work. And, as software becomes ever more integrated into every product and service, making this big shift is quickly becoming the key operational challenge for businesses of all kinds. We need a management model that doesn’t merely account for, but actually embraces, continuous change. Yet the truth is, most organizations continue to rely on outmoded, industrial-era operational models. They structure their teams, manage their people, and evolve their organizational cultures the way they always have. Now, organizations are emerging, and thriving, based on their capacity to sense and respond instantly to customer and employee behaviors. In Sense and Respond, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, leading tech experts and founders of the global Lean UX movement, vividly show how these companies operate, highlighting the new mindset and skills needed to lead and manage them—and to continuously innovate within them. In illuminating and instructive business examples, you’ll see organizations with distinctively new operating principles: shifting from managing outputs to what the authors call “outcome-focused management”; forming self-guided teams that can read and react to a fast-changing environment; creating a learning-all-the-time culture that can understand and respond to new customer behaviors and the data they generate; and finally, developing in everyone at the company the new universal skills of customer listening, assessment, and response. This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.

Offers a resource for business executives seeking to capture maximum value from information technology by drawing on a wide range of company and industry examples

The authors argue that lean production should be driven by the desire to achieve optimal customer service by sensing and responding to the customer. The customer is at the centre of the process and the organisation needs to respond in a holistic way so that the customer can impact on the design and delivery of products and processes. The book is based upon substantial research and practice by leading practitioners and heralds a paradigm shift in thinking on these issues.

Explores the secret lives of various plants, from the colors they see to whether or not they really like classical music to their ability to sense nearby danger.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

User experience (UX) design has traditionally been a deliverables-based practice, with wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, and mockups. But in today’s web-driven reality, orchestrating the entire design from the get-go no longer works. This hands-on book demonstrates Lean UX, a deeply collaborative and cross-functional process that lets you strip away heavy deliverables in favor of building shared understanding with the rest of the product team. Lean UX is the evolution of product design; refined through the real-world experiences of companies large and small, these practices and principles help you maintain daily, continuous engagement with your teammates, rather than work in isolation. This book shows you how to use Lean UX on your own projects. Get a tactical understanding of Lean UX—and how it changes the way teams work together Frame a vision of the problem you’re solving and focus your team on the right outcomes Bring the designer’s tool kit to the rest of your product team Break down the silos created by job titles and learn to trust your teammates Improve the quality and productivity of your teams, and focus on validated experiences as opposed to deliverables/documents Learn how Lean UX integrates with Agile UX

Product development teams today face an increasingly complex set of ethical problems. How do we protect user privacy? With whom should we partner? Who do we welcome into our online communities? How do we ensure online fairness? How do we keep our users safe? Too often, the first time we consider questions like these is after a complaint in the market--a painful and expensive starting point. At that point, all we can do is react. Instead, it's possible to take a pro-active approach, baking an ethical framework into our product development process. This book is a how-to guide that shows product leaders how to construct and apply a product code of ethics, to roll out the best possible solution, stay above the legal low bar and work with their extended team, including their customers, to raise and meet a higher bar. "Companies are beginning to understand why innovation must be practiced responsibly. What leaders need now is the 'how': actionable, expert advice on embedding ethical practices directly into the product development process. This book is a great place to start." Cennydd Bowles, Designer - Futurist - Director, NowNext - the ethical design and futures studio