Implementing Lean Software Development, by Mary and Tom Poppendieck

This book examines the lean manufacturing approach pioneered by Toyota and how it can apply to software development. Lean boils down to seven principles: eliminate waste, build quality in, create knowledge, defer commitment, deliver fast, respect people, and optimize the whole. Many of these are familiar to agile proponents, but not all. Of particular interest to me was the last principle, optimize the whole. Developers have a strong tendency to suboptimize a problem, to “perfect” a small block of code without considering the bigger picture. Optimizing the whole means that instead of looking at an individual step you look at the entire value stream. When combined with a stop-the-line mentality that forces teams to solve problems rather than work around them, there is a lot of potential for not only higher throughput but for higher quality.

Another interesting idea presented here was set-based design: multiple teams solving the same problems at the same time in different ways. The thought here is you can have several groups all tackle the same issue, each taking a different approach or accepting a different amount of risk. They all work simultaneously, and at the end the best one of the solutions can be taken forward. I’ve never worked at a company that was willing to put this many resources towards a single problem but it is an intriguing concept.

Overall, a good book that any agile enthusiast should read. The writing isn’t as compelling as Tabeka or as interesting as Angus, but still well worth your time. Another winner from the Addison-Wesley Signature Series of books.

First Sentence:

Paris, France, July 1785.

Sister Time, by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane

I picked this book up out of the bargain bin not knowing anything about it. Turns out it is the tenth book of a series, so I was thrown into the middle of an epic without any back story. Ringo and Cochrane are good enough writers where I stayed enthralled with the plot even when I didn’t understand the many references to previous events. The several alien species all have broad traits that both underscore the alienness and give the reader a good visual: Darhels are elf-like businessmen, Indowy are small green furry engineers, Tchpth are philosopher crabs, and Posleen are reptile warriors. I got the idea that previous books in the series give a much more thorough look at the aliens, but these high-level descriptions allowed the story to progress without chapters of exposition.

The plot here reads like a James Bond story where MI6 has been replaced by an Irish clan, Q is an alien, and Bond looks like Pamela Anderson. It rolls along quickly while still providing enough exposition that a new reader (like me) doesn’t get lost with the rich history. The action sequences were exciting, although the conclusion was a bit abrupt in my opinion. The hints at the larger scope the series covers, though, are intriguing enough that I suspect this won’t be my last trip to Ringo’s universe.

First Sentence:

The dark figure dropping over the edge of the building could have given lessons in camouflage to a Himmit.

Tell Me Where It Hurts, by Dr. Nick Trout

As a kid I found James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small on my mother’s bookshelf, and after reading it quickly devoured the rest of the set. When my brother-in-law offered to lend me Tell Me Where It Hurts by a different English vet (albeit one living in Boston), I eagerly accepted. While this more recent book didn’t quite live up to my memory of Herriot’s work, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The writing was extremely witty; Trout’s use of language had me in stitches more than once. For instance, in his early days as a vet he was nervous talking to clients and he “would begin to itch. If you took a binge-drinking frat boy, stripped him naked, and hazed him with a gallon bucket full of ravenous fire ants poured over his entire body including his nether regions, I believe you would have a reasonable approximation of the degree of itchiness that ensued.” Trout also has a knack for anthropomorphizing the animals we meet in his clinic. A wired, nervous dog in the waiting room is described as “scanning the crowd for potential assassins as part of a Secret Service detail.” The book is riddled with funny and effective phrases like these.

The stories Trout tells do a great job of relating what it must be like to be a veterinarian. He captures both the joy of successfully treating a sick animal and the heartache and grief of a passing family pet equally well. I also got a good idea of what this profession means to the author and what being a vet is all about: “striving for a connection and collaboration between two completely different species ... trying to help a frightened, sick animal with their unequivocal acceptance of your intentions ... unlike human medicine, this exchange transpires in respectful silence, in a world of tacit, clueless tolerance.” I took delight in reading this work, and if you have a well-loved pet and spend any time at the local animal clinic, you probably will too.

First Sentence:

This might seem strange, coming from an Englishman, but sometimes emergency surgery in the middle of the night can play out like a synopsis of a perfect season for the Boston Red Sox.

Trace, by Patricia Cornwell

Cornwell is just going through the motions these days. Blow Fly was bad, but Trace was truly awful. Besides a ridiculous plot and characters that are continually unhappy and unpleasant, the writing is repetitive to the point of boredom. In one chapter, an alcoholic neighbor is described as such: “She has left the station and is halfway to drunk.” A mere two paragraphs later, “She stretches her words the way people do when they’ve left the station and are happily on their way to drunk.” On the next page, the same character is “pronouncing her French extremely well for one almost at her destination of drunk.” That is a lot of metaphor for such a short passage. Bah.

Trace is an ironic name for this book, because there isn’t a trace of enjoyment to be found here. Personalities I’d liked in previous novels were angry shells of themselves, and it had a lackluster plot with so many coincidences and holes it should have been a Murder She Wrote episode. I find it hard to believe that the same author that wrote Postmortem wrote this drivel.

First Sentence:

Yellow bulldozers hack earth and stone in an old city block that has seen more death than most modern wars, and Kay Scarpetta slows her rental SUV almost to a stop.

The Search, by John Battelle

This book is an easy appraisal of the state of Internet search. As search is dominated by Google these days, Google stories dominate the book as well. In general I found this a fairly well-balanced book, discussing both the positive and negative aspects of the topic. When discussing Google, though, Battelle’s obvious admiration for the company (“Google has never known anything but success. The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail.”) is pretty obvious. He tries to temper it here and there (he includes one of my favorite Jeff Bezos quotes, “Well, of course you shouldn’t be evil. But then again, you shouldn’t have to brag about it either.”) but the overall text fairly drips with praise. It was so positive that I was surprised that Battelle used Apple rather than Google when he wrote, “While others argued that the wheel or the internal combustion engine was civilization’s greatest tool, I’d stick to my guns and argue for the Mac.” I am as impressed as anyone with what Google has accomplished, but Google’s potential scares me more than Microsoft ever did! But I digress; back to the book.

Battelle clearly understands not only how search works, but that it will become the most important factor in our interaction with the Internet in the future. He uses excellent examples of how subtly search has creeped into our everyday life, and how in turn this has affected the business world. When discussing why sites that force registration to read or search (such as the Economist and the Wall Street Journal), he makes the astute observation that in preventing people from seeing content, they are reducing their status as an respected authority. “Sites that wall themselves off are becoming irrelevant, not because the writing or analysis is necessarily flawed, but because their business model is.” Battelle gives well thought out examples on what we can expect to see in the next few years; for instance the combination of localized search and mobile devices will level many playing fields: being able to compare the prices of wine on a store-by-store, local level will make it easy to draw conclusions such as, “Whole Foods is ripping you off.” Also briefly touching on the emerging fields of domain-specific research (citing the superb Austin-based Indeed as an authority on job hunting) this book gives an encompassing, informative, and interesting survey of the search business.

First Sentence:

By the fall of 2001, the Internet industry was in full retreat.

The Starfish and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

If you cut off a spider’s head it dies, but if you cut off the leg of a starfish, it grows a new one. This biological truth has been reflected many times in our society: the French underground during WWII, terrorist cells today, open source software, and the Boy Scouts of America to name a few. These examples have led the authors to an interesting conclusion: decentralization is the key to unstoppable organizations. Interestingly, the most successful groups tend to be a combination of spider and starfish: Alcoholics Anonymous is made up of many small circles capable of operating and growing independently of each other (very starfish-like), yet Alcoholics Anonymous World Services is the parent organization that controls copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property (clearly a spider).

Sony Records, IBM, and the U.S. government are clearly not starfish (although I suppose you could argue that the original intent of the Constitution was to allow a much higher degree of state autonomy than we currently possess which in turn would dramatically decrease the spider-like top-down authority our federal government wields) and yet are obviously highly successful; given this, how can anyone claim that decentralization is superior? The answer is that a spider-like organization doesn’t imply failure any more than a starfish structure guarantees success, but the latter arrangement of small independent groups make it very difficult for a rival force to control or defeat them. Take a look at the competitors of the earlier mentioned august institutions: Sony (and most of the recording industry) has been crippled by file sharing (Napster, Kazaa, eMule); IBM while still powerful hasn’t been considered an innovator for years, ceding that label to upstart Internet companies; the government has largely failed in the war on drugs and the war on terror. This is beginning to change, however, largely due to the established companies adopting starfish principles. The armed forces and government intelligence agencies have many small, autonomous units that operate with very loose oversight; this has enabled many successes against terrorism at home and abroad. IBM has become a champion for open source software, especially Linux and Eclipse. The recording industry on the other hand has tried to defend it’s market by becoming even more spider-like, foisting DRM on the public and prosecuting individuals for file sharing which in turn is causing a growing backlash of negative public opinion—clearly not a successful strategy.

Obviously I found this book very interesting. The discussions of when decentralization is a positive thing (free speech, the open flow of ideas, privacy—nobody likes the idea of Big Brother) and when it is negative (security, accountability, safety—when on an airplane, would you want the guy in “seat 28J to decide that right about now is a good time to land?”) were spot on. The discussion behind how a starfish confederation is formed was presented in a simple yet compelling fashion: a catalyst helps like-minded people connect and then gets out of the way, his place taken by a champion that relentlessly promotes the idea. This book gives an excellent analysis of a time-proven organizational technique that anyone interested in innovation or corporate evolution should read.

First Sentence:

Don Verrilli might as well have uncorked the champagne bottle right then and there on the marble steps of the Supreme Court—the case he was about to argue was a slam-dunk.

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

The movie The Princess Bride came out when I was in high school and quickly came to rival The Blues Brothers for the top spot in my repertoire of quotable lines. “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” “I know something you don’t know. I am not left handed.” “I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.” “Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.” “Have fun stormin’ the castle!” “As you wish.” “Anybody want a peanut?” “Mawwage.” “Boo, boo! Your true love lives, but you marry another!” And of course, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Truly a classic. When I came across the original novel on a sale table, I snatched it.

Much like the movie, the book tells two stories in one. The film and the book both tell the tale of Buttercup and Wesley, but where the film has a sick boy being read a story by his grandfather, the novel has the story of the author trying to edit the (fictional) lost text of S. Morgenstern into a manageable form and convince his son to read it. Enough about the movie, though; why was the book so good? In short, it has all the wit and charm with which we are familiar from the silver screen, plus a heavy dose of flippancy and sarcasm.

One of my favorite running gags was when a character would make an anachronistic comment, and the author in an aside would try and explain it away. “‘All aboard,’ the Sicilian said. (This was before trains, but the expression originally comes from carpenters loading lumber, and this was well after carpenters.)” Goldman at one point ends up in an extended aside where he recaps the battle he had with his editor over these. “The copy editor at Harcourt kept filling the margins of the galley proofs with questions: ‘How can it be before Europe but after Paris?’ And ‘How is it possible this happens before glamour when glamour is an ancient concept?’ ... All I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don’t read them.” Smart humor like this added a whole other layer to a story I already loved. As I’ve said before I like witty books, and this one certainly qualifies.

First Sentence:

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.