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Just finished reading this and I recommend it. I’m sure you can find plenty of long-winded kiss ass book reviews on it, so I’m just gonna say that it’s a very quick read (I got through it in one day), and well worth your time, so just get it and read it and see what you think.
I liked that the thrust is much more philosophical than technical, meaning it doesn’t descend into the morass of the grindingly fucking boring jargon-filled software development book. It actually reads like a motivational self help book, and a pretty decent one at that.
The main thing that rules about tools like this book is that they provide a great point for people to start discussing ideas they’ve been having about the way they work. I’ll explain what I mean:
The 37signals guys are obviously total agile hippies, and agile is definitely killer for its ability to cut out the crap and let you just get shit done. We’ve recently jumped into a couple of big development projects here at Fracture, and in researching how to adapt our processes we’ve been exposed to agile as a methodology.
This couldn’t have come at a better time for us, because I think each of the Fracturdors had been naturally exploring more agile ways to work for some time anyway, so to learn about this philosophy that nicely encapsulates a lot of what we’d been thinking really helped solidify it for us. (A quick side note on seeking improved ways of doing things - this is something we are always doing, and I think it is the absolute number one rule to running a successful company. No shit. You have to care enough about what you’re doing to always strive to do it better, and your efforts to do so have gotta be constant and tireless).
The next logical step is obviously taking those great improvements we’d been making as individuals, and sharing them with the rest of the company. They then become incorporated into the company’s direction, and before you know it you’re ripping on some next level shit. Then the guys are stoked because their company are total lords of guruness and it’s because of a direct contribution they’ve made, and your clients are buzzing out because now you are totally next level and your service and product are so infinitely better that they’re falling over themselves to throw clammy fistfuls of money at you just so they can book a meeting to be in the presence of such greatness, and you’re standing on your boardroom table whacking at them with a creaky old stick, yelling “Back, you crazed money-throwing gaggle of gobbling turkeys! BACK!!!!”
