Manager's Bookshelf

The Center for Information-Development Management sponsors several conferences throughout the year, and at each conference speakers and presenters recommend books they have found helpful. These books are detailed here with descriptions from and links to Amazon.com, if you are interested in purchasing them.

Choose a category below to see a particular book or scroll through the page to view all the books.

45 Effective Ways for Hiring Smart!: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game
By Dr. Pierre Mornell.
“Hiring Smart” is Mornell’s understanding of the layers of tension and insecurity that riddle the hiring process. He knows how to give people who are nervous on the phone a chance to prove they’re capable and articulate in person. And he knows that in this era of downsizing, “we are all temps,” as hirers and hirees alike have told him.

The Balanced Scorecard
By Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton.
The Balanced Scorecard provides the management system for companies to invest in the long term-in customers, in employees, in new product development, and in systems-rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. It will change the way you measure and manage your business.

The Business Case for Web-Based Training
By Tammy Whalen and David Wright.
Evaluates the relative merits and uses of web-based distance learning and addresses the management issues; cost benefit, marketing, pricing of web-based courses, business process reengineering.

Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds
By Howard Gardner.
Minds are exceedingly hard to change. Ask any advertiser who has tried to convince consumers to switch brands, any CEO who has tried to change a company’s culture, or any individual who has tried to heal a rift with a friend. So many aspects of life are oriented toward changing minds—yet this phenomenon is among the least understood of familiar human experiences. Now, eminent Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, whose work has revolutionized our beliefs about intelligence, creativity, and leadership, offers an original framework for understanding exactly what happens during the course of changing a mind—and how to influence that process. Whether we are attempting to change the mind of a nation or a corporation, our spouse’s mind or our own, this book provides insights that can broaden our horizons and improve our lives.

Communicating Change
By T.J. Larkin and Sandar Larkin.
When a company decides to make a major organizational change—whether it’s a new emphasis on customer service, quality management, restructuring or downsizing—managers must get the message through to front-line employees, and enlist their support...or the changes will create more turmoil than progress.

Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage through High-Quality Web Content
By Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton.
Explains the theory and practice of producing reader-focused, compelling content on your website. Shows you how to organize a publishing team and how to create a web publishing strategy. Discover what high-quality content really is, and learn how to create it.

Content Management Bible—2nd Edition
By Bob Boiko.
Written by one of the leading experts in content management systems (CMS), this newly revised bestseller guides readers through the confusing—and often intimidating—task of building, implementing, running, and managing a CMS.

• Updated to cover recent developments in online delivery systems, as well as XML and related technologies
• Reflects valuable input from CMS users who attended the author’s workshops, conferences, and courses
• An essential reference showing anyone involved in information delivery systems how to plan and implement a system that can handle large amounts of information and help achieve an organization’s overall goals

Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery
By JoAnn T. Hackos.
Successfully manage web content to achieve a competitive edge. Using the content-management strategy that she developed for companies such as Nortel, Motorola, Cisco, and others, Hackos walks readers through the stages of effective web content management.

Coping With Difficult People...In Business and in Life
By Robert M. Bramson.
Bosses, friends, family members, they’ve made your life hell—until now! Based on fourteen years of research and observation, Dr. Robert Bramson’s proven-effective techniques are guaranteed to help you right the balance and take charge of your life.

Corporate Cultures
By Terrence E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy.
In the early 1980s, Terry Deal and Allan Kennedy launched a new field of inquiry and practice with the publication of their landmark book, Corporate Cultures, in which they argued that distinct types of cultures evolve within companies, with a direct and measurable impact on strategy and performance. Despite the dramatic evolution of the business landscape over the last twenty years, the basic principles of the book remain as fresh and relevant as they did when it was first published: that organizations, by their very nature, are social enterprises, with tribal habits, well-defined cultural roles for individuals, and various strategies for determining inclusion, reinforcing identity, and adapting to change. In the new introduction, the authors reflect on the enduring lessons of their investigation into the life of organizations.

Crossing the Chasm
By Geoffrey Moore.
Here is the bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It’s essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world’s most exciting marketplace.

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity
By Jakob Nielsen.
From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, he delivers complete direction on how to connect with any web user, in any situation. Nielsen has arrived at a series of principles that work in support of his findings:

• That web users want to find what they’re after quickly
• If they don’t know what they’re after, they nevertheless want to browse quickly and access information they come across in a logical manner

This book is a must-have for anyone who thinks seriously about the web.

Developing Quality Technical Information: A Handbook for Writers and Editors
By Gretchen Hargis, Michelle Carey, Ann Kilty Hernandez, Polly Hughes, Deirdre Longo, Shannon Rouiller, and Elizabeth Wilde.
This practical guide developed by IBM software documentation experts presents the basics of conveying quality technical information: from writing from the intended audience’s point of view, to editing the text and visual elements. Includes a glossary, quality checklists, red flag words, and bibliography.

Developing SGML DTDs: From Text to Model to Markup
By Eve Maler and Jeanne El Andaloussi.
Document Type Definition (DTD) specifications form the foundation for every document based on the SGML language—therefore DTD quality is too important to be left to chance. This helpful guide shows how to develop DTDs that work, based a proven methodology and techniques. Explains how DTD development benefits from the same rigorous treatment as software development: Articulate project goals, analyze requirements, write specifications, design and implement readable and maintainable code using good programming style, perform thorough testing, and document the work along the way. For writers, editors, and other subject matter experts; software developers and other DTD implementers; and publishing managers.

Emotional Intelligence
By Daniel Goleman.
There was a time when IQ was considered the leading determinant of success. In this fascinating book, based on brain and behavioral research, Daniel Goleman argues that our IQ-idolizing view of intelligence is far too narrow.

Emotional Intelligence at Work
By Hendrie Weisinger, PhD.
In “Emotional Intelligence at Work,” Dr. Hank Weisinger, a leading expert in the application of emotional intelligence, shows the reader how to master the core competencies of emotional intelligence.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
By Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies.

Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
By Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen.
Here’s another management parable that draws its lesson from an unlikely source—this time it’s the fun-loving fishmongers at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. In Fish! the heroine, Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and mother of two, is asked to engineer a turnaround of her company’s troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen describe as a “toxic energy dump.” Most reasonable heads would cut their losses and move on. Why bother with this bunch of losers? But the authors don’t make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she’s left to sort out this mess with the help of head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! aims to help employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace.

Fish! Tales: Real-Life Stories to Help You Transform Your Workplace and Your Life
By Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen, and Philip Strand.
Fish! told the story of a fictional company which transformed itself by applying lessons learned from Seattle’s famous Pike Place Fish market. Now, with Fish! Tales, readers can learn how real-life businesses and individuals energized their workplaces—and their lives—by implementing the lessons from Fish! Best of all, the book stands on its own for newcomers to the Fish! philosophy. Fish! Tales focuses on diverse companies, such as a bustling Sprint regional customer service center, a quiet neuro-surgical unit at a major hospital, and a brilliant car dealership. It features dozens of short takes—quick and easy ways to apply the Fish! philosophy right now. And it includes a detailed program with specific steps and action plans.

Framemaker to HTML: Single Source Solution for Paper and Web
By Ken Jackson and Sonya Keene.
If you need to convert your large existing Adobe FrameMaker documents into HTML-based documents for the web or an intranet, check out FrameMaker to HTML. The authors start out by discussing the process of using converter tools to turn complicated documents, including those with tables and graphics, indexes, cross references, and tables of contents, into linked HTML pages.

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
By Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton.
Since its original publication in 1981, Getting to Yes has been translated into 18 languages and has sold over 1 million copies in its various editions. This completely revised edition is a universal guide to the art of negotiating personal and professional disputes. It offers a concise strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
By Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox.
This book, which introduces the Theory of Constraints, is changing how America does business. The Goal is a gripping, fast-paced business novel about overcoming the barriers to making money. You will learn the fundamentals of identifying and solving the problems created by constraints. From the moment you finish the book you will be able to start successfully addressing chronic productivity and quality problems.

The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations
By John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen.
Based on interviews within over 100 organizations in the midst of large-scale change, The Heart of Change delivers the simple yet provocative answer to this question, forever altering the way organizations and individuals approach change. While most companies believe change happens by making people think differently, Kotter and Cohen say the key lies in making them feel differently. They introduce a new dynamic “see-feel-change” that fuels action by showing people potent reasons for change that spark their emotions.

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
By Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir.
The book begins with a briefing on Jakob’s web usability principles, themselves culled from years of research. The 50 sites fall under such categories as Fortune 500 Sites, Highest-Traffic Sites, and E-Commerce Sites. The content is simply presented: Four book pages are devoted to each homepage. The first page is a clean screenshot of the site’s homepage (for readers to make their own, unbiased judgments), followed by a page that explains the site’s purpose and summarizes its success—or failure—at usabilty. The third and fourth pages are devoted to crtiques, where Jakob and Marie present no-holds-barred commentary for specific usability practices, as well as suggestions for improvement. Although only the homepage of each site is analyzed, many of the critiques can be applied to overall website design.

Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
By Jonathan Price and Lisa Price.
Attention, web writers! This book will show you how to craft prose that grabs your guests’ attention, changes their attitudes, and convinces them to act. You’ll learn how to make your style fast, tight, and scannable. You’ll cook up links that people love to click, menus that mean something, and pages of text that search engines rank high. You’ll learn how to write great web help, FAQs, responses to customers, marketing copy, press releases, news articles, e-mail newsletters, Webzine raves, or your own web resume. Case studies show real-life examples you can follow. No matter what you write on the web, you’ll see how to personalize, build communities, and burst out of the conventional with your own honest style.

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition
By Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy.
It covers Netscape Navigator 6, Internet Explorer 6, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS2, and all of the features supported by the popular web browsers. In HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, the authors cover every element of HTML/XHTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. Tips about HTML/XHTML style help you write documents ranging from simple online documentation to complex presentations. With hundreds of examples, the book gives you models for writing your own effective web pages and for mastering advanced features like style sheets and frames.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
By Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville.
With a swift and convincing stroke, the authors tear down many entrenched ideas about web design. This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the elements and decisions required for well-crafted web design.

Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio and People
By JoAnn Hackos
The 1994 best–selling classic Managing Your Documentation Projects set the industry standard for technical documentation. However, since then, much has changed in the world of information development. With this new title, JoAnn Hackos looks beyond the structured project of the 1980s and 1990s. Instead, she focuses on the rapidly changing projects of the 21st century and addresses how to introduce agile information development without neglecting the central focus of planning information design and development around the needs of information users.

Introduction to DITA: A User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Finally! A user guide for the popular OASIS DITA standard. If you have been using DITA, or are just joining the DITA community, this book provides you with the information you need to accomplish your goals. The user guide not only presents the basic methodology of DITA and its benefits for creating your information set, but explains step-by-step how to author DITA XML topics, create maps for your deliverables, and work through the production processing tasks. The book includes a thorough explanation of the DITA model and the major elements used to create your topics using the task, concept, and reference information types. The DITA User Guide uses a task-based approach (the user guide is written with DITA) to help you create topic-based output.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
By Alan Cooper.
In this book about the darker side of technology’s impact on our lives, Alan Cooper begins by explaining that unlike other devices throughout history, computers have a “meta function:” an unwanted, unforeseen option that users may accidentally invoke with what they thought was a normal keystroke.

The Innovator’s Dilemma
By Clayton M. Christensen.
What do the Honda Supercub, Intel’s 8088 processor, and hydraulic excavators have in common? They are all examples of disruptive technologies that helped to redefine the competitive landscape of their respective markets. These products did not come about as the result of successful companies carrying out sound business practices in established markets. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, author Clayton M. Christensen shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies.

The Innovator’s Solution
By Clayton Christiansen and Michael Raynor.
Drawing on years of in-depth research and illustrated by company examples across many industries, Christensen and Raynor argue that innovation can be a predictable process that delivers sustainable, profitable growth. They identify the forces that cause managers to make bad decisions as they package and shape new ideas—and offer new frameworks to help managers create the right conditions, at the right time, for a disruption to succeed. The Innovator’s Solution addresses a wide range of issues, including:

• How can we tell if an idea has disruptive potential?
• Which competitive situations favor incumbents, and which favor entrants?
• Which customer segments are primed to embrace a new offering?
• Which activities should we outsource, and which should we keep in-house?
• How should we structure and fund a new venture?
• How do we choose the right managers to lead it?
• How can we position ourselves where profits will be made in the future?

Killer Content: Strategies for Web Content and E-Commerce
By Mai-lan Tomsen.
A well-rounded guide for IT professionals and system architects, this book defines the changing models for web-based commerce and shows you how to correlate the demands and rewards of digital commerce and adapt them to your own business environment. Killer Content explains this important value-add information for maintaining your content-driven business. In addition to learning about the emerging digital assets and consumer communities, the author examines a series of case studies from Internet groundbreakers such as Priceline.com, TheStreet.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com. The book explains how these innovative companies generated revenue by understanding the needs of Net users. Killer Content also examines the emerging services and issues around digital commerce, such as personalization, privacy, and payment. Other key topics include: The business models in digital commerce that generate real return-on-investment for content sites, a profile of the business problems and personal goals that drive the online consumer’s browsing and navigation patterns, a synopsis of the different technologies available to implement and manage digital commerce, an in-depth summary of the technical challenges of delivering products ordered over the Internet.

Leadership is an Art
By Max Depree.
In what has become a bible for the business world, the successful CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., explores how executives and managers can learn the leadership skills that build a better, more profitable organization.

The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations
By James M. Koozes and Barry Z. Posner.
Based on the popular training program offered by The Tom Peters Group, this completely revised and updated edition of The Leadership Challenge captures the continuing interest in leadership as a critical aspect of human organizations.

Leading Change
By John P. Kotter.
The book is split up into three parts. In the first part—The Change Problem and Its Solution—Kotter discusses the eight main reasons why in many situations the improvements have been disappointing, with wasted resources and burned-out, scared, or frustrated employees. Each of these eight errors are discussed in detail, using simple, clear examples. “Making any of the eight errors in common to transformation efforts can have serious consequences.” But Kotter argues that these errors are not inevitable. And this is why Kotter has written this book. “The key lies in understanding why organizations resist needed change, what exactly is the multistage process that can overcome destructive inertia, and, most of all, how the leadership that is required to drive that process in a socially healthy way means more than good management.”

Managing At the Speed of Change
By Daryl R. Conner.
Daryl Conner runs the world’s premier consulting firm devoted exclusively to change. Here, he coaches middle- and top-level executives in implementing business innovations on time and under budget.

Managing Knowledge: A Practical Web-Based Approach
By Wayne Applehans, Alden Globe, and Greg Laugero.
For those responsible for future corporate strategies on the web, the challenge of fully harnessing all of an enterprise’s information is extremely humbling. Managing Knowledge: A Practical Web-Based Approach is an inspiring title designed to keep you motivated while you plan your information strategy.

Managing Your Documentation Projects
By JoAnn Hackos.
Presents methods for producing technical project documentation, for managers, writers, editors, graphic designers, and consultants.

Masters of Change: How Great Leaders in Every Age Thrived in Turbulent Times
By William M. Boast and Benjamin Martin.
Rather than subscribe to a methodical formula for leadership success, Masters of Change approaches effective management skills from the context of history, applying the power of models to instruct the reader. Boast calls Masters a “who to,” not a “how to”—who to learn from and emulate. It unveils the abiding characteristics of great leaders—such as Churchill, Frederick the Great, Elizabeth the First, Napoleon, and Confucius-who survived and thrived in the midst of unpredictable change, providing insights into the ever-shifting challenges of an ambiguous world.

The Minding Organization: Bring the Future to the Present and Turn Creative Ideas into Business Solutions
By Moshe F. Rubinstein, Iris R. Firstenberg.
This is a remarkable example of minding: identifying a purpose, developing a team, and acting to accomplish that purpose. Achieving this kind of high-level connection is what The Minding Organization is all about. This book will show you how to transform your organization into one that behaves like a living organism-alive with ideas and instantly able to adapt for survival in an increasingly complex, unpredictable global business world.

Minimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel
By John Carroll.
Minimalism is an action- and task-oriented approach to instruction and documentation that emphasizes the importance of realistic activities and experiences for effective learning and information seeking. Since 1990, when the approach was defined in John Carroll’s The Nurnberg Funnel, much work has been done to apply, refine, and broaden the minimalist approach to technical communication.

Nature of Leadership
By Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and DeWitt Jones.
Customer Reviews: Unique and beautiful... This book was one that I just couldn’t resist picking up. Not too often do you come across a unique business book. Masterpiece! As an ardent Covey follower for years I must say this is a must experience for all!

Now, Discover Your Strengths
By Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton.
Marcus Buckingham, coauthor of the national bestseller First, Break All the Rules, and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research & Education Center, have created a revolutionary program to help readers identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. At the heart of the book is the Internet-based StrengthsFinder® Profile, the product of a 25-year, multimillion-dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant “themes” with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success. In developing this program, Gallup has conducted psychological profiles with more than two million individuals to help readers learn how to focus and perfect these themes.

Performance Drivers: A Practical Guide to Using the Balanced Scorecard
By Nils-Goran Olve, Jan Roy, and Magnus Wetter.
The concept of the Balanced Scorecard, first introduced by Kaplan and Norton in a Harvard Business Review article in 1992, enables managers and company leaders to implement a successful performance measurement plan which incorporates both financial and operational concerns. It gives managers a fast, comprehensive view of the business, allowing them to focus on critical areas and drive the organization’s strategy forward. Today, numerous large consultancies and their large, multinational clients are using the Balanced Scorecard as a method of performance measurement and a performance driver. This guide shows managers how to apply the Balanced Scorecard, enabling them to view several areas of performance simultaneously—a requirement in today’s complex organizations.

Power Talk: Using Language to Build Authority and Influence
By Sarah Myers McGinty Ph.D.
Show up on time, work hard, do well, and rise up the corporate ladder? Maybe. Actually, oral communication is the most crucial ingredient in advancement on the job. In Power Talk Sarah Myers McGinty analyzes the social and psychological elements of speech in the workplace, helping readers hear who's in charge and talk their way ahead.

Rapid Development
By Steve McConnell.
Corporate and commercial software-development teams all want solutions for one important problem—how to get their high-pressure development schedules under control. In Rapid Development, author Steve McConnell addresses that concern head-on with overall strategies, specific best practices, and valuable tips that help shrink and control development schedules and keep projects moving. Inside, you’ll find:

• A rapid-development strategy that can be applied to any project and the best practices to make that strategy work
• Candid discussions of great and not-so-great rapid-development practices—estimation, prototyping, forced overtime, motivation, teamwork, rapid-development languages, risk management, and many others
• A list of classic mistakes to avoid for rapid-development projects, including creeping requirements, shortchanged quality, and silver-bullet syndrome
• Case studies that vividly illustrate what can go wrong, what can go right, and how to tell which direction your project is going.

Right From the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role
By Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins.
According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, 64 percent of executives hired from the outside won’t make it in their new jobs. While executives from within the ranks know the challenges, culture, and politics of a company, newcomers face a corporate minefield. Right from the Start is Ciampa and Watkins’s survival manual for leaders taking on starting work at a new company.

Sams Teach Yourself Svg in 24 Hours with CDROM
By Micah Laaker.
Sams Teach Yourself SVG in 24 Hours provides a thorough understanding of the technology, complete with working examples and practical answers to common development questions. The book focuses on how to create imagery in SVG for static and dynamic graphics. Readers will learn: SVG fundamentals; how it compares to other technologies, including Flash; Manipulating SVG; painting with SVG and using effects; Bringing SVG to life; understanding animation; Text and typography; Efficient coding techniques; Understanding how to integrate JavaScript and dynamic data; Mastering SVG and overcoming common problems.

Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error
By Steven Casey.
In the new second edition of Set Phasers on Stun: and Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error, noted designer and author Steven Casey has assembled 20 factual and arresting stories about people and their attempts to use modern technological creations. Although the operator or pilot usually gets blamed for a big disaster, the root cause can frequently be found in subtle characteristics of the device’s human interface. Technological disasters can often be traced directly to the interplay between people and the design of a device—be it an airliner cockpit, the controls in an industrial plant, a spacecraft’s instruments, a medical system, a nuclear reactor, or even a commercial dishwashing machine.

SGML: The Billion Dollar Secret
By Chet Ensign.
Chet Ensign has written the book we all need when talking to the mass market about SGML. The book outlines, in business terms, what SGML is, why someone would want to do it, and what a business can expect to gain by using SGML. Mr. Ensign does a grand job of taking all of the technobabble out of the industry and explaining in clear business terms the problem with information in corporate documentation and how some companies have solved it.

Single Souring: Building Modular Documentation
By Kurt Ament.
Single sourcing is more than mechanical document conversion. It is an information development strategy. Although it is often confused with the process of converting paper-based documents into online formats, single sourcing is a writing strategy that enables technical writers to develop centralized information modules, then map them to distinct audiences and media.

Six Sigma For Managers
By Greg Brue.
Six Sigma is today’s most dynamic management approach for dramatically improving product and process quality­­along with employee enthusiasm and involvement. Its success, however, requires a new corporate mindset and an entirely transformed set of management practices. Six Sigma for Managers is a step-by-step guidebook for understanding and managing every facet of this landmark.

Standards for Online Communication
By JoAnn Hackos and Dawn Stevens.
Experience firsthand what makes online information work and why. Standards for Online Communication gives you guidelines for how to place information online within your company. It provides both a design and development process and a set of guidelines for the Internet, intranets, and help systems for designers and authors who need to create effective electronic information.

Starting a Documentation Group: A Hands-On Guide
By Peter J. Hartman.
New publications managers are in great need of good advice and direction. Peter Hartman provides new managers with that sound advice and direction in an easy-to-read presentation.

Strategic Planning: What Every Manager Must Know
By George Albert Steiner.
In today’s complex business world, strategic planning is indispensable to achieving superior management. George A. Steiner’s classic work, known as the bible of business planning, provides practical advice for organizing the planning system, acquiring and using information, and translating strategic plans into decisive action.

The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment
By Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton.
In today’s business environment, strategy has never been more important. Yet research shows that most companies fail to execute strategy successfully. Behind this abysmal track record lies an undeniable fact: many companies continue to use management processes—top-down, financially driven, and tactical—that were designed to run yesterday’s organizations.

Swimlane Process Mapping
By Jane C. Frazier.
The swimlane process map is a user-friendly approach to process analysis and documentation that allows employees from multiple disciplines to have a shared view of a process. Swimlane mapping is the method of choice for companies attempting to “manage by process.” Today, companies are divided into departmental work groups and managed that way. Yet the work of a company usually crosses work groups. Increasingly companies are acknowledging this fact and attempting to plan, document, manage and improve their processes from a “cross-functional” perspective. This self-study workbook provides instruction on every aspect of swimlane process mapping. Practical lessons lead you through each step in the typical mapping effort. Exercises allow you to test your understanding and worksheets encourage you to apply the steps to your own processes.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
By Malcolm Gladwell.
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children’s television, direct mail and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world’s greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all, it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message—that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.

To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
By Henry Petroski.
The moral of this book is that behind every great engineering success is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular) engineering failures.

Type Talk: The 16 Personality Types That Determine How We Live, Love, and Work
By Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen.
Determine your personality using a scientifically validated method based on the work of C.G. Jung and gain insight into why others behave the way they do, and why you are the person you are.

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design
By JoAnn Hackos and Janice Redish.
Task analysis is an important aspect of user interface design, insuring that the end product is usable and practical. Written by task analysis experts, this book is the first book that provides full-length coverage of task analysis.

Web Content Management: A Collaborative Approach
By Russell Nakano.
A book about developing, managing, maintaining and deploying web content solutions across the enterprise. Addresses the common questions that all small, medium and large enterprises encounter as they grow.

What Is Six Sigma?
By Peter S. Pande, Larry Holpp, Pete Pande, Lawrence Holpp, Rath & Strong.
Six Sigma has gained an avid following among executives and managers for its ability to reduce cycle time, eliminate product defects, and dramatically increase customer involvement and satisfaction. But Six Sigma can’t work without widespread employee involvement and commitment. What Is Six Sigma? explains, for employees, the core ideas behind Six Sigma, the crucial roles and responsibilities employees have in a Six Sigma.

Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
By Jennifer Fleming.
Navigation is one of the most important (and least understood) issues in web site design. Why do so many people get lost on the web? How can we create more user-centered environments? The answer is by crafting the user experience. This book explores navigation design in depth, covering usability engineering, interface design, lessons from “real life,” and more. The first half of the book suggests goals and processes for developing workable navigation schemes. The second half focuses on designing by purpose, with chapters on entertainment, shopping, identity, learning, information, and community sites. Case studies of popular sites help show what works and what doesn’t. Throughout the book, interviews with expert such as Clement Mok, Nathan Shedroff, and Jakob Nielsen provide valuable insights. The accompanying CD-ROM includs a tour of selected sites, a “netography”, and trial versions of popular software tools.

Who Moved My Cheese?
By Spencer Johnson.
Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives.

Working With Emotional Intelligence
By Daniel Goleman.
For leaders, emotional intelligence is almost 90 percent of what sets stars apart from the mediocre. As Goleman documents, it’s the essential ingredient for reaching and staying at the top in any field, even in high-tech careers. And organizations that learn to operate in emotionally intelligent ways are the companies that will remain vital and dynamic in the competitive marketplace of today—and the future.

Writing Effective Use Cases
By Alistair Cockburn.
Alistair Cockburn’s Writing Effective Use Cases is an approachable, informative, and very intelligent treatment of an essential topic of software design. “Use cases” describe how “actors” interact with computer systems and are essential to software-modeling requirements. For anyone who designs software, this title offers some real insight into writing use cases that are clear and correct and lead to better and less costly software.

XML: A Manager’s Guide
By Kevin Dick.
Amid the technical hoopla over the Extensible Markup Language (XML), many managers and executives find themselves scratching their heads and wondering what the new language means to them. In XML: A Manager’s Guide, author Kevin Dick offers an executive summary of this exciting new technology that focuses on the big picture.

XML: A Primer
By Simon St. Laurent.
Simon St. Laurent’s foray into XML is best described by an adjective not often used with computer books: charming. From its portable size to its playful code examples, XML: A Primer is an interesting and well-crafted read. Stylistic considerations aside, it is also a useful introduction for anyone who does considerable work in HTML or SGML.

XML and FrameMaker
By Kay Ethier.
This book is designed to teach anyone working in data-intensive publishing how XML can be leveraged to make the job of presenting data easier. While the XML discussions within the book are general, FrameMaker is used for all of the examples since it supports a wide variety of XML import and export options. In addition, author Kay Ethier shows you how FrameMaker’s powerful formatting features lend themselves to publishing XML documents—without reworking them. This book is written for a professional audience, including writers, database administrators, developers, and production staff. Ethier shows you how to

• capture or emit XML from existing documents or databases
• use XML to create documents that may be published to many other formats
• build an “XML round-trip” for Adobe FrameMaker 7

XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web
By Jack Park and Sam Hunting.
This developer's overview and how-to book provides a complete introduction and application guide to the world of topic maps, the powerful new means of navigating the world wide web.

XML Weekend Crash Course
By Kay Ethier and Alan Houser.
Get Up to Speed on XML—in a Weekend! The big day is Monday—the day you get to show off what you know about XML. The problem is, you’re not really up to speed. Maybe it’s been a while since you worked with Extensible Markup Language, or maybe you just like a challenge. In any event, we’ve got a solution for you—XML Weekend Crash Course. Open the book Friday evening and on Sunday afternoon, after completing 30 fast, focused sessions, you’ll be able to jump right in and start creating cutting-edge XML solutions.

XSLT Cookbook
By Sal Mangano.
Critical for converting XML documents, and extremely versatile, the XSLT language nevertheless has complexities that can be daunting. The XSLT Cookbook is a collection of hundreds of solutions to problems that Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) developers regularly face. The recipes range from simple string-manipulation and mathematical processing to more complex topics like extending XSLT, testing and debugging XSLT stylesheets, and graphics creation with SVG. Recipes can be run directly or tweaked to fit your particular application’s needs more precisely. The XSLT Cookbook provides an ideal companion both for developers still figuring out XSLT's template-based approach who want to learn by example, and for developers who know XSLT and want a collection of quickly reusable recipes. Each recipe walks through a problem and a solution, with explanations of the choices made and techniques used in creating that solution, and many recipes include alternate solutions and explore issues like convenience and performance. Among the variety of XSLT books now available, none has the explicit solution-oriented approach of this Cookbook.