Are you curious about video game development? If you’re like a lot of C# developers, you’re intrigued by Unity, the cross-platform game engine that you can use to make professional-quality games, simulations, and more. So how do you get started with Unity? You may have even downloaded and installed Unity. But what do you do next? There are so many options, trying to figure out what to do first can be overwhelming. If you’re a C# developer, how do you get started writing C# code with Unity quickly?

Check out the webinar with Head First C# author Andrew Stellman. We’ll dive right into Unity, and get you up and running writing C# code with Unity and Rider. I’ll walk you through several Unity Labs, which we built into Head First C#—the popular book from O’Reilly Media—as a way for C# learners to explore Unity while getting practice with C#. We designed these labs as a quick and efficient way to give C# developers a “just enough to be dangerous” level of Unity knowledge. We’ll start by using the Unity editor to navigate around Unity and the 3D space. Then we’ll write code to take control of Unity GameObjects, and build some simple 3D games, and you can use the Unity Lab PDF downloads to follow along through every step along the way.

Welcome to Head First C#, one of the most fun and effective ways to get C# into your brain… fast! Head First C# is highly engaging and brain-friendly guide to learning C#. Do you want to get up and running with C# quickly? Would you prefer to skip long-winded, boring, overly theoretical introductions and jump straight to writing code and building fun projects? Do you want to learn by doing? If you answered “yes” to those questions, then Head First C# was written just for you! Itâ€s filled with projects, puzzles, and activities that keep things light, lively, and interesting. Youâ€ll learn important C# concepts, ideas, and tools, and get lots of practice writing code. And most importantly, youâ€ll dive write in and start building projects from the very beginning.

Check out the early praise we’ve already gotten for the book:

“Thank you so much! Your books have helped me to launch my career.”
Ryan White, Game Developer

“If you’re a new C# developer (welcome to the party!), I highly recommend Head First C#. Andrew and Jennifer have written a concise, authoritative, and most of all, fun introduction to C# development. I wish I’d had this book when I was first learning C#!”
Jon Galloway, Senior Program Manager on the .NET Community Team, Microsoft

“Not only does Head First C# cover all the nuances it took me a long time to understand, it has that Head First magic going on where it is just a super fun read.”
Jeff Counts, Senior C# Developer

“Head First C# is a great book with fun examples that keep learning interesting.”
Lindsey Bieda, Lead Software Engineer

The new 4th edition has some exciting new features, including full support for both Visual Studio 2019 (Windows) and Visual Studio for Mac—not only is Visual Studio an amazing IDE for developing C# apps, it’s also a wonderful tool to learn and explore C#. We also added fun Unity Labs, where you’ll use Unity to practice your C# skills by building 3D projects and games.

Download a free PDF of the first four chapters from our GitHub page: https://github.com/head-first-csharp/fourth-edition

We’re incredibly pleased to announce that the first two chapters of our next book, Head First C# (4th edition), are now available as a PDF from our GitHub page and on the O’Reilly learning platform. We’ve put a huge amount of work this new edition, which includes:

• New and improved projects that help you learn C# and .NET Core
• Cross-platform support using Visual Studio on both Windows and Mac
• A Unity Lab at the end of every chapter that uses 3D game development with Unity to help you learn and explore C#
• A brand new cover design!

Follow Head First C# on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeadFirstCSharp

The most common Agile framework for project management and product delivery today is Scrum. If you combine Scrum with Kanban—an Agile method for process improvement and workflow management—you get Scrumban: a project management/product delivery tool that features pull systems, workflow visualization, and process improvement.

In this report, Andrew examines the fundamentals of Scrum and Kanban, and explains how a Scrumban hybrid can combine Scrum and Kanban effectively and take both of them to the next level. A widely recognized expert in transforming and improving software organizations, teams, and code, Stellman explains how teams that adopt Scrumban combine the core parts of both approaches to deliver better products today while continuing to improve into the future. Agile practitioners will discover why a growing number of software teams now use Scrumban.

• Review the core elements of Scrum and Kanban for product delivery and process improvement
• Understand how Scrumban incorporates the empirical process control of Scrum with the pull systems of Kanban to maintain the integrity of both
• Explore common misconceptions, including the notion that Scrum and Kanban have the same goals or that Scrumban is just “iterationless” Scrum
• Learn how to use your current Scrum implementation as a starting point for meaningful process improvement that can make your product delivery even more effective
• Examine a case study that describes a successful real-world implementation of a Scrum and Kanban hybrid

What is Scrumban? is available on the O’Reilly learning platform. If you don’t have access to the platform, please contact us and we send get a copy of the report to you.

We’re pleased to announce our latest book, the 4th edition of Head First PMP, the latest edition of our popular preparation guide for the Project Management Professional certification exam. We thoroughly updated it to include all of the latest information to prepare you to pass the current PMP exam. But there’s one thing we kept: we use the language, ideas, and practical techniques of project management, so instead of cramming, you’re learning. We don’t just want you to pass the exam; we want to help you become a better project manager. That’s why Head First PMP is the easiest way to get the concepts behind the PMP exam into your brain.

Head First PMP teaches you the latest principles and certification objectives in The PMBOK® Guide in a unique and inspiring way. This updated fourth edition takes you beyond specific questions and answers with a unique visual format that helps you grasp the big picture of project management. By putting PMP concepts into context, youâ€ll be able to understand, remember, and apply them—not just on the exam, but on the job. No wonder so many people have used Head First PMP as their sole source for passing the PMP exam.

This book will help you:

• Learn PMPâ€s underlying concepts to help you understand the PMBOK principles and pass the certification exam with flying colors
• Get 100% coverage of the latest principles and certification objectives in The PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition
• Make use of a thorough and effective preparation guide with hundreds of practice questions and exam strategies
• Explore the material through puzzles, games, problems, and exercises that make learning easy and entertaining

We’re thrilled to announce that the 4th edition of our PMP preparation guide, Head First PMP, is in the final stretch of its production cycle. It will be released very soon! We just got the last of the proofs back from our (fantastic) proofreader, and it looks really good. We’ve gotten so many notes from readers asking about the release date, so we’re especially happy to point out that the release page on the Amazon page for the 4th edition is accurate.

You can pre-order the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-PMP-4th-ed/dp/1492029645/

We’re excited to finish this project and provide what we believe to be the most effective PMP preparation guide on the market. We’ve updated it to include all of the new material in the 6th edition of the PMBOK® Guide. But we’ve stuck the central idea behind every edition of the book, the idea that we think has made it so successful: that we teach you about project management in a way that also prepares you for the exam. We’ve continued our commitment to helping you learn, not cram, so you can become a better project manager while you prepare for certification.

Thanks again for your patience, and for your support over the years.

In Head First Agile, we answer the question “What is agile?” and go in to give you a deep dive into Scrum, XP, and Lean/Kanban. We also include a complete guide to the PMI-ACP® (Agile Certified Practitioner) certification, so if you’re preparing for the PMI-ACP® exam, this is definitely the book for you!

You can buy the book from Amazon (and other retailers): https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Agile/dp/1449314333/

It’s also included with your Safari subscription. If you’re not on Safari, you can start a free trial right now: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022374.do

So if you’re looking for a fun, easy-to-understand, brain-friendly guide to agile, we really think you’ll love this book.

We are extremely excited to announce our next book, Head First Agile, will be published by O’Reilly Media.

Have you been reading about agile, and want to learn more? Do you think that agile might help you and your team build better software? You’re not alone. Agile has gotten really popular with software teams because the ones that have “gone agile” often talk about the great results they get. The software they build is better, which makes a big difference to them and their users. Not only that, but when agile teams are effective, they have a much better time at work! Things are more relaxed, and the working environment is a lot more enjoyable.

Head First Agile is a brain-friendly guide to understanding agile concepts and ideas. Here’s what you’ll find inside:

• Understanding the agile mindset: You’ll learn what an agile methodology is, and why agile methodologies that seem so different can still all be agile
• Managing projects better with Scrum: This popular and effective lightweight methodology can help you build better, more valuable software, and make your team and your users happier
• Engineering better code with XP: Its focus on code and programming can help you and your team build better systems
• Continuously improving with Lean and Kanban: You’ll learn how they can help your whole team get better every day

We have two goals for Head First Agile. First and foremost, we want you to learn agile. But we also are focused on our readers looking to pass the PMI-ACP certification, so not only does the book have 100% coverage of the material for the PMI-ACP exam, it also includes end-of-chapter exam questions, a complete exam study guide, exam tips, and a full-length practice PMI-ACP exam—everything that you need to pass the exam.

Head First Agile will be available at retailers in Fall 2016.

We’re very happy to announce the 2016 update of Head First PMP. This update brings our popular PMP exam preparation guide up to date with the latest changes to the PMP exam. The updated book is available in stores and from online retailers everywhere.

When David Bowie passed away, the world lost a really special musician. The greatest artists rarely achieve everything they’ve done alone, and Bowie was no exception. I sat down with his main producer and collaborator in this interview with Tony Visconti [pdf] from our book, Beautiful Teams. The book is an exploration of what makes teams tick, through interviews and stories from people who worked with both extraordinary and ordinary teams. Being from the world of software, Jenny and I concentrated on software teams. But we wanted to go beyond software to try to discover some basic truths about teams. When I reached out to Tony, I expected interesting anecdotes, but I was really surprised (and pleased!) with how much his stories about working with rock stars reminded me of the other stories in the book.

Here’s the interview in its entirety, along with an introduction featuring another highly insightful mind, Tim O’Reilly. I hope you find this sheds light not just on the mind of a brilliant musician and producer, but also on your experiences with your own teams.

Jenny and I love hearing from our readers, and we got this excellent question yesterday from a Learning Agile reader (which I’ve edited a bit for length):

I’m just starting to read Learning Agile however I can’t wait until I’m done to comment on what I have read so far. The first thing I’ve noticed is there is no mention of a dedicated person, like a BA, writing the requirements. One example has the lead developer and architect, team lead, and product owner writing the requirements. No wonder the project failed.

I have been a full time BA for the past 14 years and for 16 years prior to that I was a developer who also wrote the requirements for the systems I built. I’ve only worked on waterfall projects and many of them were successful because of the requirements I wrote. I think there is a place for Business Analysts on Agile projects.

I’m curious why, up to this point in the book, business analysis and business analysts have not been mentioned in writing requirements for waterfall or agile projects.

I want to share the response that I wrote to this reader, because I think it’s a great question, and it really speaks till the goals that Jenny and I had when we wrote Learning Agile.

So first of all, both Jenny and I have a lot of respect for — and experience with — requirements management and business analysis. I even spent several years in the early 2000’s managing a team of BAs (much of it on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center!). Welcoming changing requirements is a basic principle of agile, so clearly there’s an important place on an agile team for someone with your experience.

So why don’t we talk much about business analysis or requirements management in the first two chapters of the book?

Jenny and I had a lot of long discussions about exactly how to handle this particular issue when we were writing the book, in no small part because business analysis and requirements engineering are very important topics to us personally.

Our book is called “Learning Agile” because we concentrated on teaching agile, and we put a lot of work into coming up with an approach that will work for the largest audience that we could. Because while that topic is at the core of software engineering and is a critical pillar of agile, it’s also very complex and nuanced. Frankly, it’s not easy to teach, and we wanted to get it right and teach it well.

In the last chapter, (“Coaching”) we mention an old saying about teaching: “meet them where they are, not where you want them to be.” We’d love it if all of our readers came to our book with the same deep knowledge of and experience with business analysis that you have. But that’s just not where they are.

So here’s the problem we needed to solve: how do we teach, say, a hardcore developer about requirements management — understanding what users need (as opposed to what they say they need today), and building great software that really meets those needs — in a way that helps him or her to not just understand it, but also care about it and recognize that it’s critical the success of to his or her own projects?

And just as importantly, how do we teach such an important topic to readers who not only don’t understand requirements management at all, but actually have negative feelings towards requirements (which, if you search programmer forums, is not uncommon)?

Our answer was to introduce the whole topic of requirements management very deliberately, and very carefully. We lay down a foundation in the first few chapters, so that by the time we teach about requirements backlogs in chapter 4, user stories in chapter 5, and minimal marketable features in chapter 7, we’ve given that hardcore developer with a somewhat antagonistic attitude towards business analysis the framework to really accept it.

And hopefully we’ll have done the same for you with other topics that we teach, so that when we talk about decoupled architecture and emergent design in chapter 6, it will feel familiar and make sense to you — even if you haven’t written a lot of code! — because we laid the groundwork and didn’t just dive into advanced architecture and design from page 1.

I hope this helps to answer your question, and that you enjoy the rest of the book!

We write this book because we really want you to learn agile! Agile has revolutionized the way teams approach software development, but with dozens of agile methodologies to choose from, the decision to “go agile” can be tricky. This practical book helps you sort it out, first by grounding you in agileâ€s underlying principles, then by describing four specific—and well-used—agile methods: Scrum, extreme programming (XP), Lean, and Kanban. Each method focuses on a different area of development, but they all aim to change your teamâ€s mindset—from individuals who simply follow a plan to a cohesive group that makes decisions together. Whether youâ€re considering agile for the first time, or trying it again, youâ€ll learn how to choose a method that best fits your team and your company.

We’ve already gotten some great praise. Here’s what other people have to say about it:

Learning Agile is available directly from O’Reilly, where you can buy the paper copy, a DRM-free eBook, or a great deal where you can get both for a discount. It’s also available at Amazon.com and all major retailers.

Have a look:

Wow.

I’m not sure why it only just struck me that the book will be in the same series as Learning Perl, which I believe was the first O’Reilly book that I bought back in 1994 when I was studying computer science at CMU. The animal is a black lion tamarin, a tiny primate that weighs just half a kilogram. Apparently, it’s so endangered that there will be far more pictures of it on our book covers than actual animals in the wild. They do have very agile little hands, and apparently they’re good at working in groups, so it seems like a fitting animal.

Jenny and I are really excited about this book. We’re about two thirds done with it. We’d probably be finished by now, but we had to take a break to push third editions of our bestselling titles Head First C# and Head First PMP out the door. But we’re jumping back into it, and finishing the last few chapters. We’ve also assembled a phenomenal tech review team, possibly the best that we’ve had for any of our books. They’ve already given us some fantastic feedback, and we’re really optimistic that this will be a great way to learn about agile.

The book is due out early next year. I hope you’re as excited about it as we are!

This was a major update of the book. The biggest challenge was finding an effective way to teach XAML. XAML is a fantastic tool for building robust user interfaces, but a lot of developers find that it has a pretty steep learning curve. The Head First C# approach has been to use Visual Studio as a learning, teaching, and exploration tool, and the improvements that the Microsoft IDE team made to the visual designer made it especially effective for teaching XAML. We decided to have the book dive straight into XAML design and exploration, and have the reader build a video game right in the first chapter:

The trick to really getting over that XAML learning curve turned out to be going back to WinForms development for a few chapters. WinForms is an older technology, but it’s much simpler to understand. This let us lay down a solid foundation of C#, .NET, and object oriented design concepts, which makes XAML a lot easier to learn. It also gives the reader the opportunity to build projects to solve the same problem in both WinForms and Windows Store (or WPF) using XAML. Seeing the same thing done in more than one way is one of the most effective methods for learning programming, and we’re able to take advantage of that many times throughout the book.

I hope you’re as excited about this as we are! If you’re looking to learn C#, whether you’re new to programming or experienced with another language, you should definitely have a look at Head First C#.

We’ve worked with O’Reilly to make the first three chapters available for free as a PDF.

Download the first three chapters of Head First C# for free here.

“Grand principles that generate no action are mere vapor. Conversely, specific practices in the absence of guiding principles are often inappropriately used.”

– Jim Highsmith, Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd ed.)

The board game Othello has the slogan, “A minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” This applies really well to a team thatâ€s learning Scrum. The basic practices and mechanics of Scrum are straightforward, and not difficult to adopt. This is why many teams use Scrum as a starting point for going agile.

The basic pattern for a Scrum project is simple, which makes it very attractive for teams who want to go agile. And if that were all it took to adopt Scum effectively, we’d all be running great agile teams! But many teams find that they run into trouble with their Scrum adoption, and usually end up with what feels like an “empty” implementation. We explore this in our new talk, Scrum and Self-Organizing Teams: Openness, Courage, Pigs, and Chickens [pdf].

For a Scrum team to become effective, they need to do more than just follow the basic Scrum pattern. Effective Scrum teams are self-organizing, as Ken Schwaber explains (note the phrase that we emphasized):

For Scrum to work, the team has to deeply and viscerally understand collective commitment and self-organization. Scrumâ€s theory, practices, and rules are easy to grasp intellectually. But until a group of individuals has made a collective commitment to deliver something tangible in a fixed amount of time, those individuals probably donâ€t get Scrum. When the team members stop acting as many and adopt and commit to a common purpose, the team becomes capable of self-organization and can quickly cut through complexity and produce actionable plans.

– Ken Schwaber, Agile Project Management with Scrum

The goal of this talk is to help teams “get Scrum” by building on the practices and patterns of Scrum, and through those practices show the ideas behind the principles of collective commitment and self-organization.

In Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber introduced five Scrum values: courage, commitment, respect, focus, and openness. Understanding these values is an important key to understanding self-organizing teams.

• Each person is committed to the projectâ€s goals. That level of commitment can be achieved when the team has the authority to make decisions in order to meet those goals, and everyone has a say in how the project is planned and executed. For example, sometimes a requirements document isn’t perfect. To make the project successful, a team might have to ignore a documented requirement in order to deliver a product that’s much more valuable. This is only possible once they’re given the authority to make that decision.
• Team members respect each other. When team members have mutual respect, theyâ€re able to trust each other to do a good job with the work theyâ€ve taken on. But that respect doesnâ€t always come easily to programmers and other technical people. Many programmers, especially highly skilled ones, often base their respect purely on technical ability. This can be a barrier to effective Scrum adoption. If a programmer doesnâ€t respect the product owner, he wonâ€t listen to that product owner when they talk about the goals of the project.
• Everyone is focused on the work. When a Scrum team member is working on a sprint, thatâ€s his only job for the duration of the sprint. He is free to do whatever work is needed to complete the iteration backlog, and handle any changes that are made to that backlog during the sprint. When every team member is focused on the sprint goals and given the freedom to do whatever work is needed to meet those goals, the whole team is able to organize itself and easily redirect whenever a change is needed.
• Openness. When youâ€re working on a Scrum team, everyone else on the team should always be aware of what youâ€re working on and how it moves the project towards its current goals. Many of the Scrum practices are aimed at encouraging openness among the team members. Task boards, for example, allow everyone to see all of the work being done by each team member, and how much work is left to do. Burn-down charts let each person gauge for themselves how quickly the sprint is meeting its iteration goals. The Daily Scrum, when done effectively, is a almost pure exercise in openness, because each person lays bare their tasks, challenges, and progress for the whole team to see. All of these things can help the team to create an atmosphere of mutual support and encouragement.
• Team members have the courage to stand up for the project. When you choose openness over opaqueness, you make the team stronger rather than making yourself stronger at the expense of the team. It takes courage to do that, but when you do you end up with a better product and a better work environment. Scrum teams have the courage to live by values and principles that benefit the project. It takes courage to ward off the constant pushback from a company whose values clash with the Scrum and agile values. This requires vigilance on the part of every team member, especially the Scrum Master. But it also requires each person to be willing to trust that delivering valuable software will help them overcome resistance to these values. This requires courage too, especially when it comes time to sit down for a review with the boss. It takes courage to say to yourself, “Helping this team produce valuable software is more important to me that how the company sees my own personal contribution.”

Methodologies have built-in values

Every company has its own culture that includes specific values. For example, some companies value separation of duties, where each person has their specific role to play, and is protected from having to be accountable for things that they canâ€t easily influence or control. Other companies value transparency, where information is shared freely and even low-level employees can influence management decisions. Neither of these is the “right” way to run a company. Every individual company has a culture that evolves over time, based on the way itâ€s managed and the decisions that are made.

Every methodology has values built into it. Specific agile principles are often tied to (or implemented by) individual practices, and that those practices are an effective way for a team to bring each principle to the project. A team in a company that reserves decision-making for managers only will find it difficult to truly commit to projects. The same goes for any value or principle: if they clash with the companyâ€s values, it presents a barrier to adoption.

But in a company where the culture matches the agile values and principles, an agile team will be much more successful than a command-and-control team. (This is one of the sources of the “astonishing results” that some agile teams report.)

You might be surprised at just how well the agile values and principles match your companyâ€s culture. A good first step in introducing agile to your company is to talk about the values, and how they might impact your companyâ€s culture. If you find that your agile adoption runs into trouble, finding the mismatch between agile values and company culture can help you smooth out the transition (or at least help you feel better by understanding why things went wrong).

So how would you build courage on a team? How would you get a team to believe in themselves, and believe that Scrum will not only help them build more valuable software, but that they company will see the value in their new methodology?