Michael de la Maza

Rapid Chess Improvement is the ideal book for serious adult players who want to improve. It describes a study plan which came about thanks to a re-evaluation of standard chess teaching and includes several unique components aimed at improving deficiencies in the play of adult players.This book is the only one of its kind for the simple reason that it has been written by an author who hugely improved his own rating over a 12 month period by following his own advice. He therefore fully understands the challenges faced by enthusiastic players who are relatively new to the game. This is in sharp contrast to most books aimed at this level which are usually written by very strong players who have long forgotten what it feels like to be starting out in the game.

A collection of articles about agile coaching from sixteen CECs, CTCs, and CSTs.

We believe that if organizations adopt agile as a set ofbeliefs, they will develop an agile culture and that this agile culture is whatleads to continuous adaptation and innovation. The focus of the changeeffort must be on the heart, not the head or the hands.Processes and methods can become stale and rote, and can stifle innovation— even processes that were initially developed to be agile. An agileculture, however, will continuously improve and adapt without the needfor periodic change initiatives.Numerous books and best practices exist to help organizations with implementingagile practices, or the “doing” side of the equation. Our reasonfor writing this book is to examine the values and culture that makeorganizations agile.

A collection of essays about agile and agile coaching from leading practitioners in the field. Includes the following How Courage Can Create SafetyHeidi Why Your Agile Teams are Bad at EstimationHeidi Why aren't my teams accountable?Aga In Conversation with Edgar Answering Three Common Questions about CultureZsolt Berend and Tony is it a Unicorn?Tricia Are leaders needed for self-organizing teams?Tim How Your Organization Can Make Great Decisions By DefaultMike Ten Things the Beatles Taught Me About Being AgileMike Ten sentences with all the Scrum Master advice you’ll ever needMike Why Agile Teams Should Estimate at Two Different LevelsEric The 3 Principles Agile Leaders Should Live By During An Organizational TransformationMichael de la Maza and Elena Virtual Reality Will Disrupt Agile Coaching and TrainingJohn Why is psychological safety being ignored?Bob Understanding Agile MetricsRon Leadership Lessons for Creating High-Performing Scrum TeamsMackenze What All Great Teams PracticeGene Proper Scaling of Scrum and Dynamic Financial ForecastingGene Centralized vs. Decentralized CoachingLisa 10 Components that Successfully Abolished Hierarchy (in 70+ companies)Ellen Building Team working agreementsPhilippe Leaders of chaos. How traditional management perpetuates chaos in digital ITMike Lean Economics 101: The Power of WIP LimitsMike Lean Economics 101: Parallel Development Is Killing YourMike Productivity! 5 Practices To Start Scaling AgileDavid Why we don’t re-estimate story pointsKate Becoming a 10x DeveloperGeePaw Coaching? Like PeopleJoe The 3-5-3 of ScrumErkan The War Zone - The Place in Every Organization Where Agile Meets WaterfallVamsi Krishna Sizing a spike?Juriaan How to Build Your "Spotify Model"Madhavi Garden Your Thoughts Kate What the heck is self awareness and why should you care?Mark How to Cross-Skill and Grow T-shaped Team MembersYi Over-specialization and waste of potentialSam IT Leadership Is Broken. Here’s How To Fix It.Nirmaljeet Accelerating Scrum Success with Lean PrinciplesKathryn Dear Beloved Clients, Please Start By DoingRobert C. Martin (Uncle Bob): The Tragedy of CraftsmanshipMaria Use This 1 Method to Do More Work in Less Time. Discover how an Agile approach can help you get to market faster.Blake Do you know Kung Fu?Ian Twenty Top Fails in Executive Agile LeadershipIan Monte Carlo forecasting in ScrumIan Antipattern of the Unlimited WIPKurt The Attraction of Classic HierarchiesDaniel IN PRAISE OF SWARMINGEwan O' On Scrum Mastering...9 things to tryStephanie 5 Powerful Things About the SprintStephanie The Art of Product Backlog RefinementIllia Eliminate dependencies, don’t manage themRoman Sustainable Pace in Product ManagementAllison Looking at Agile Coaching and Sports CoachingLizet Are You Asking The Right Questions?Dana Agile? DevOps? You won't get there with Fear in your workplace!Garry Where There's No Friction There's The Four Pillars of the Fearless TribeJohanna “Agile Coaching” Is Not the GoalJM A Smashing Retrospective!Michael How To Change Your Organizational CultureMichael How To Replicate Spotify's SuccessMichael How to Overcome Resistance in Your Agile Transformation - The Power of InvitationAjeet 5 Ways ScrumMasters Can Enhance Daily Standups

Why do some companies excel with agile and others see virtually no improvement? The difference is culture and an understanding that agile is a framework for deep cultural change instead of a process or set of practices to increase efficiency. Processes and methods can become stale and rote, and can stifle innovation—even processes that were initially developed to be agile. An agile culture, however, will continuously improve and adapt without the need for periodic change initiatives. Why Agile The Values Behind the Results focuses on why and how agile works and where agile should take organizations in terms of values. Here you’ll why agile fails most often, how culture determines results, the difference between values and beliefs, a framework for describing agile organizational values, how to recognize common beliefs that support and undermine an agile organization. If agile is a framework for change, this book is about what this change looks like and how agile beliefs lead you there.

Are you being harassed and discriminated against at work?Are you surrounded by toxic managers?Then you need to learn how to take 'defensive' notes that stand up in an HR investigation or a court of law.FBI Director Comey provided a sterling example of how to take such notes. Using his example as a springboard, this book describes a notetaking system that will serve you well in adversarial situations.I wrote this book after being in a toxic workplace for over a year. Employees asked me what they could do to improve the situation and I outlined how to take Comey notes. They loved what they saw and I turned the outline into this 100 page book.Enjoy!

We are delighted to bring you this volume of the best agile articles of 2020. Our goal in publishing this book is to cull through the many articles that are published every year to bring you a curated set of high-quality articles that capture the latest knowledge and experience of the agile community in one compact volume. Our purpose is twofold. First, we understand that it can be hard to figure out where to go when looking for ideas and answers. There are thousands of blogs, videos, books, and other resources available at the click of a mouse. But that can be a lot to sort through. So, we thought we could be of some assistance. Second, we wanted to bring some visibility to many people who are doing good work in this field and are providing helpful resources. Our hope is that this publication will help them connect to you, the ones they are writing for. Our intention is that this publication is to be by the agile community as a service to the agile community and for the agile community. With that in mind, we pulled together a great group of volunteers to help get this work into your hands. The articles in this volume were selected • A diverse Review Committee of twenty-four people with expertise in a variety of areas related to agile.• The agile community. A call for nominations went out in early 2020 and over 120 articles were nominated by the community. We selected the top 50 articles to present in the publication.The articles themselves cover a wide variety of topics, including organizational structure, culture, and agile leadership. There is something for almost everyone here. This is the fourth book in the series. Previous books, Best Agile Articles of 2017, 2018, and 2019, are available on Amazon and on the website at are thankful for the great participation of the agile community at large and to our sponsor, Scrum.org.

A collection of essays about agile and agile coaching from leading practitioners in the field. Includes the following authors and their Pete Behrens Lean Startup has Changed Nothing! ; Sonja Blignaut If you want to innovate, don’t say so ; Melissa Boggs At the Intersection of Culture & Strategy ; Zach Bonaker Scrum Guide Sliders ; Braz Brandt Agile in Highly Regulated Environments ; Maxime Castera What Kids Taught Me About Being Agile ; Felipe Castro & Alexandre Freire Kawakamai Transcend the “Feature Factory” Mindset Using Modern Agile and OKR ; Mike Cohn Five Lessons I’m Thankful I Learned in My Agile Career ; Esther Derby Change Artist Super Empathy ; Bob Galen Agile An Awful Truth ; Gene Gendel Addressing Problems, Caused by AMMS; You Get What you Ask Agile Coaches-“Centaurs”; What Should Agile Leadership Care About?; “Who are the Judges?” Who Decides on Who is Gonna Coach? ; Gene Gotimer An Agile Approach to Software Architecture ; David Hawks The User Story Needs A Remodel. Here’s Why ; Chris Hoerée Eco Leadership, A leadership approach for the ecosystems of tomorrow ; Rowan Jackson British A Brilliant Example of How Cost-Cutting Increases Costs ; Ivar Jacobsoen & Roly Stimson Escaping Method Prison ; Jeremy Jerrell Becoming A Non-technical Scrum Master ; Ron Jeffries Implications of Enterprise Focus in Scrum ; Betsy Kaufmann Does Your Coaching Build Roadblocks Instead of Relationships? ; Jason Knight Scrum Events Take Too Much Time ; Klaus Leopold WIP Limits Must Die ; John Looney Engineering a Culture of Psychological Safety ; Yi Lv Seeing the system 1 vs. n product backlogs ; Nirmaljeet Malhorta Why the idea of a scrum team is so powerful ; Ian Mitchell 20 Unagile Things to Avoid Saying and Some Better Alternatives ; Chris Murman What Can You Do About Organizational Silence? ; Dave Nicolette Zombie Scrum ; Stephanie Ockerman 4 Ways to Coach with the Scrum Values ; Tim Ottinger Feeling Safe? ; Barry Overeem Myth 8: The Scrum Master is a Junior Agile Coach ; Niels Pflaeging Change is more like adding milk to coffee ; Allison Pollard Starting an Agile Center of Excellence ; Mary Poppendieck The Cost Center Trap ; E. Campbell-Pretty Facilitating Squadification for a SAFe Agile Release Train ; Jane Prusakova Honest or Nice ; Paulo Rebelo Don’t Limit the Role of the Scrum Master ; Chelsea Robinson Empowering a new culture to emerge in organizations ; Johanna Rothman Agile Approaches Require Management Cultural Change; With Agile, No Warnings Needed; Power, Management, and It’s a Cultural Problem ; Rafael Sabbagh The Burger A Tale of Systems Thinking, Bottlenecks and Cross-Functionality ; Michael Sahota Consciously Approaching Agile for Lasting High Performance ; Reese Schmit Stop Wasting $$$ Building So Much Crap! ; Ken Schwaber Scrum is simple, just use it as is!! ; Hadyn Shaugnessy Managing Culture A Matter of FLOW ; Salma El-Shurafa Best Practice for Product Leaders ; Cherie Silas The Power of Interlocking Roles ; Zuzi Sochova Scrum Transformation Journey ; James Sywilok The Scrum Task Board and the Self-Managing Team ; Christine Thompson 3 Skills for an ACE ScrumMaster; Building Trust Safely at Work; Scrum The Product Owner and Scrum Master Partnership ; Plus 5 more authors!

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Written by MIT AI PhD and business school professor Dr. Michael de la Maza, this is not another dry, academic textbook. You can tell that by the funny looking cover! This is a hands-on playbook for translating your passion for sports into a powerful analytical edge. Forget surface-level stats. You’re about to go behind the curtain and build the same kinds of models used by professionals.Inside, you won't just read about analytics—you'll build it from scratch. You Recreate the Moneyball Build the regression models that allowed the Oakland A's to outsmart the league and quantify exactly how many runs lead to a win.Master the NBA Move beyond basic shooting percentages. Build models to calculate expected Field Goal Percentage (eFG%), visualize player shot charts, and identify the league's most underrated scorers.Solve Football's Biggest Use probabilistic models to definitively answer the should they go for it on 4th and 1? You'll build the tool that makes the right call when the game is on the line.Decode the Beautiful Use network science to create and visualize soccer passing networks, revealing team tactics, key playmakers, and the hidden geometry of an attack.Dominate the Apply machine learning to cricket data to predict player performance and uncover the metrics that truly matter in the modern game.Those are just some of the chapters from the book. Whether you are interested in soccer, golf, or esports, there is a chapter for you.Throughout the book you will learn how to use everything from simple statistics like linear regression to advanced machine learning models like decision trees and neural networks to analyze sports data.Whether you want to dominate your fantasy league, start a career in sports analytics, or just be the smartest person in the room during the game, this book is your ticket.