Category: Book review
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Book review: Kill It With Fire, by Marianne Belotti
I read this book slowly, not because it is long, or difficult, but because it is incredibly thought-provoking. Belotti has spent time doing the grinding work of upgrading the brownest of fields, and has managed to retain a sense of curiosity and fresh thinking that comes through in every example. The book’s layout is clear,…
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Book Review: Project to Product, by Mik Kersten
Have you read Accelerate yet? If you haven’t, you might want to go read that one first and come back to Kersten’s book, Project to Product. When I think about how software is trying to reinvent itself, Accelerate, by Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, and Jez Humble is the book that presents the business case for…
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Book Review: Strategic Writing for UX by Torrey Podmajersky
Disclosure: I got a review copy of this book. Further disclosure: Torrey is part of the pink-haired tech people. We are legion. This book is a snappy and sharply-focused exploration of the words that make the magic happen in user interfaces. Podmajersky accurately identifies places that more needs to be said, and then avoids them,…
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Book Review: Academic Slide Design by Ann E. Fandrey
This book says “Academic”, but it’s also an excellent resource for the person writing technical/software presentations. We often face the problem of trying to convey really important concepts in a way that serves people who are primarily listening to us as well as people who are reading the slides, either because they don’t speak the…
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Book Review: Accelerate
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is an excellent summation of the overall findings of the State of DevOps reports and what the implications are for organizations trying to persuade themselves into DevOps transformation. When…
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Response to: Modern Technical Writing, by Andrew Etter
I’ll be honest. I’m a little mad I didn’t write this book. It’s clear, lucid, and pithy. I agree with much of the philosophy of minimal tooling and semantic separation of form and content. Etter says, Great documentation makes new hires productive in days instead of weeks, prevents thousands of calls to customer support, is…