March 25, 2010
Books, Development
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97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know
When I bought this I was thinking it would help me design new systems… It won’t. But… it provides amazing insight into what the role and the actual job of being a software architect is. Which I actually found a lot more useful. It was a bit odd to see people I’d worked with in there (especially as I’ve worked on code and systems they’ve designed, I guess those experiences must have taught them a few lessons!)
A very interesting book with many perspectives, but it won’t tell you how to architect software, it will give you many insights into the job of software architect.
March 17, 2010
Books, Development
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Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Steve Krug
If you design anything used by people and you’ve never done any user testing then you must read this! It sets out a simple way to get started on the road to user testing.
I have done some user testing over the years both as facilitator and as observer, so a lot of the book isn’t ‘new’, however there is always more to learn and it’s always good to get other peoples insights and ideas, so it was still extremely useful.
The book is a quick and simple read (Krug’s aim is to make it short enough to read on a flight) , it has the same ease of access as Don’t make me think, and whilst I now want to run off and do more testing, I didn’t feel quite as ‘changed’ at the end of reading it as I did with Don’t make me think. Perhaps I felt more connection with Don’t make me think as I read the second edition and the ‘new’ chapters in it were the same concepts we’d just published some research papers on so I felt a real connection to it.
(* co-naturality, the same idea can be thought up by different people across the globe at the same time, it doesn’t belong to anyone, and especially if you are researching the same topic the fact that two sets of researchers came to the same conclusion just adds weight to the idea.)
March 14, 2010
Books, Strategy
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Linchpin, Seth Godin
I was horrified when I read that Seth Godin had written a book about becoming indispensable! Why?
Well, every new job I’ve started I find someone who has made themselves ‘indespensible u’,sually by coding themselves into every system there is; email gets sent to them, only they know the logon, there is no documentation (I hate it too, but none!). They have become such an integral part of the system that nothing can happen without them, everything fails if they don’t logon one morning! I, on the other hand have been trying to make myself dispensable, trying to code myself out of a job, make each system so good I’m not needed*. So to write a book extolling the virtues of becoming indispensable shocked me, especially from Seth Godin! I was so infuriated I went out and bought it, I had to find out why.
How wrong was I!
This book explains why we don’t need those people any more (I’ll call them Lynchpins – because they kill the projects they work on) he refers to them as ‘factory workers’, once you figure out the system (map) anyone can do that job it’s monkeys pressing buttons, and why by coding myself out of a job, by making the systems as good as we possibly can I’m making myself indispensable! As when any other projects come up, it’s me they want to do it, I learn more, I have a more interesting job and everyone gains.
I would say that not all the concepts in the book are new (and he doesn’t claim that they are), I can relate some of these back to Enterprise Tuesday sessions, Predictably Irrational et al and Paul Arden’s books (especially Whatever you think think the opposite). But the way he has assembled these threads, and many others, into a manifesto of how we need to work is amazing. It is an inspiring book, that I nearly put down because I felt by reading it I may actually be procrastinating from what I could be doing! It’s not often that I find business books to be as engrossing as a thriller but I just had to keep reading this.
Putting his words into practice may not be easy for some (me included) but realising that in some cases it’s just the ‘Lizard brain’ trying to keep everything steady, and realising how much better you can make life for yourself and your work colleagues, I think it’s well worth putting the effort in.
*okay so writing a system that will run itself is possibly a bit far fetched but one that doesn’t require constant and unnecessary attention, and one where the attention it does require can be done by anyone.