UNLOCKING AGILE'S MISSED POTENTIAL Agile has not delivered on its promises. The business side expected faster time to market, but they still experience the long delays of bloated releases. Engineers thought they would be given time to build the product right the first time, but they are rushed under pressure to deliver new features within impossible schedules. What went wrong? The culprit is feature-based waterfall release planning perpetuated in a vain attempt to achieve business predictability. Agile didn't address the business need for multi-year financial predictability. The Agile community's answer was the naive response, "The business needs to be more Agile." Waterfall release planning with fixed schedules undercuts a basic tenet of Agile development - the need to adjust content delivered within a timebox to account for evolving requirements and incorporation of feedback. Agile without flexible content is not Agile. This book introduces a novel solution that enables product teams to deliver higher value within shorter cycle times while meeting the predictability needs of the business. Organizations today want product teams that break down walls between product management and engineering to achieve schedule and financial objectives. Until now they haven't had a way to implement product teams within the rigid constraints of traditional organizational structures. The Investment planning approach described in this book supports small development increments planned and developed by product teams aligned by common schedule and financial goals. It uses Cost of Delay principles to prioritize work with the highest value and shortest cycle times. Investments provide a vehicle for collaboration and innovation and fulfill the promise of highly motivated self-directed Agile development teams. This book is for engineers, product managers and project managers who want to finally do Agile the way it was envisioned. This book is also for leaders who want to build high-performance teams around the inherent motivational environment of Agile when done right. Foreword by Steve McConnell, author of More Effective Agile: A Roadmap for Software Leaders (Construx Press, 2019).

Drawing on the expertise of Latin American, North American and European scholars, this volume offers cutting-edge theoretical explorations of trends in the region, as well as in-depth case studies of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela. Essays in the volume focus on changes to class formation in Latin America and offer new insights into the state-form, exploring the complex relationship between state and market in contexts of late capitalist development, particularly in countries endowed with incredible natural resource wealth.

After the debt crisis of the 1980s and the parallel Right-wing neoliberal assault across Latin America, roughly the last decade witnessed resurgence in Leftist movements and governments in the region. As imperial wars advanced in other areas of the world, Latin America served as a beacon of hope, a site of resistance. Latin American peasant, worker, and indigenous radicalism placed revolution back in the vocabulary of Leftists across the planet. At the same time, centre-Left regimes assumed power in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, only to perpetuate the neoliberal capitalist projects that preceded them. The state of the Latin American Left demands serious and sophisticated theoretical and historical analysis. This anthology-bringing together political scientists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, economists, and journalists-will provide such an assessment. The central thematic issues of the period in question will be addressed, followed by a number of case studies written by the most astute radical Left observers of the contemporary setting. What role for state power in current Left political projects? What should revolution look like?What form does class struggle take in today's context? What are the dynamics of centre-Left regimes? How do indigenous struggles relate to Left politics? What is the role of gender in revolutionary movements? How has the American Empire reacted to Latin American Leftist resurgence? What have been the rural and urban phases of social movement contention during the neoliberal era? The anthology will tackle these fundamental questions. This book is original in that it offers an integrated mix of themes and case studies regarding the contemporary Latin American Left resurgence. There is some variation in authors' political perspectives, but all self-identify with the radical Left. While articles noting the phenomenon of Left resurgence exist, there is as of yet no integrated book explaining the relevance of the contemporary Latin American Left.

After the debt crisis of the 1980s and the parallel Right-wing neoliberal assault across Latin America, roughly the last decade witnessed resurgence in Leftist movements and governments in the region. As imperial wars advanced in other areas of the world, Latin America served as a beacon of hope, a site of resistance. Latin American peasant, worker, and indigenous radicalism placed revolution back in the vocabulary of Leftists across the planet. At the same time, centre-Left regimes assumed power in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, only to perpetuate the neoliberal capitalist projects that preceded them. The state of the Latin American Left demands serious and sophisticated theoretical and historical analysis. This anthology-bringing together political scientists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, economists, and journalists-will provide such an assessment. The central thematic issues of the period in question will be addressed, followed by a number of case studies written by the most astute radical Left observers of the contemporary setting. What role for state power in current Left political projects? What should revolution look like?What form does class struggle take in today's context? What are the dynamics of centre-Left regimes? How do indigenous struggles relate to Left politics? What is the role of gender in revolutionary movements? How has the American Empire reacted to Latin American Leftist resurgence? What have been the rural and urban phases of social movement contention during the neoliberal era? The anthology will tackle these fundamental questions. This book is original in that it offers an integrated mix of themes and case studies regarding the contemporary Latin American Left resurgence. There is some variation in authors' political perspectives, but all self-identify with the radical Left. While articles noting the phenomenon of Left resurgence exist, there is as of yet no integrated book explaining the relevance of the contemporary Latin American Left.

In The Impasse of the Latin American Left, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber explore the region's Pink Tide as a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American politics experienced an upsurge in progressive movements, as popular uprisings for land and autonomy led to the election of left and center-left governments across Latin America. These progressive parties institutionalized social movements and established forms of state capitalism that sought to redistribute resources and challenge neoliberalism. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, these governments failed to transform the underlying class structures of their societies or challenge the imperial strategies of the United States and China. Now, as the Pink Tide has largely receded, the authors offer a portrait of this watershed period in Latin American history in order to evaluate the successes and failures of the left and to offer a clear-eyed account of the conditions that allowed for a right-wing resurgence.

In The Impasse of the Latin American Left, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber explore the region's Pink Tide as a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American politics experienced an upsurge in progressive movements, as popular uprisings for land and autonomy led to the election of left and center-left governments across Latin America. These progressive parties institutionalized social movements and established forms of state capitalism that sought to redistribute resources and challenge neoliberalism. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, these governments failed to transform the underlying class structures of their societies or challenge the imperial strategies of the United States and China. Now, as the Pink Tide has largely receded, the authors offer a portrait of this watershed period in Latin American history in order to evaluate the successes and failures of the left and to offer a clear-eyed account of the conditions that allowed for a right-wing resurgence.

Rooted in thousands of pages of Access to Information documents and dozens of interviews carried out throughout Latin America, Blood of Extraction examines the increasing presence of Canadian mining companies in Latin America and the environmental and human rights abuses that have occurred as a result. By following the money, Gordon and Webber illustrate the myriad ways Canadian-based multinational corporations, backed by the Canadian state, have developed extensive economic interests in Latin America over the last two decades at the expense of Latin American people and the environment. Latin American communities affected by Canadian resource extraction are now organized into hundreds of opposition movements, from Mexico to Argentina, and the authors illustrate the strategies used by the Canadian state to silence this resistance and advance corporate interests.

This is the story of LESLIE WEBBER, a retired physician with interesting adversities, from the depression years to the 90's. The writing was mostly for family, but at this time I have been encouraged to publish it. The most of the material is from memory, but augmented by letters written over a 35 year period, which my mother had saved. I was a "letter writer" from the time I left home at age 15 until my mother's death. I was not aware she had saved them all until they were discovered after her death in a closet. My mother and grandmother were instrumental in my success by their persistent prayers in my behalf. From my perspective, coincidence, does not answer many details of my story as well as divine intervention. Windows seemed to open in reasonable times when doors were closed. The reader can make up his or her own mind.