He does go on doesn't he?

Scrumban And Other Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development by Corey Ladas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel bad in some ways for this book. It came just after reading the Kanban book and also the rspec book. So when I picked this book up I was looking forward to stretching my legs intellectually. Sadly, this book wasn’t what I wanted. Too simple in some ways and not simple enough in others this book suffers from being an advanced book on agile (by requiring pre-knowledge of SCRUM/XP and Lean thinking) yet also rebuilding arguments eloquently made by others in setting the basis of the book. Some of the analogies seemed well-worn too (coffee-cup kanban example I’m looking at you).

As an aside, please, if you’re writing a book about Kanban don’t take any more pictures of the post-it notes! I get tokens but it makes it hard to read the damn tokens with your photography. Just do a diagram and have done.

It did help clarify some of my thinking on Kanban but was it worth the effort? Only just.

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The Complete Nemesis The Warlock by Pat Mills
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I always had a soft spot for Nemesis and this book filled in a lot of stuff I didn’t know. However there were some low points. With age I found less to like about Torquemada’s resurrections (seriously couldn’t he just escape?) and some of the politics feels patronising.

Saying that I loved the ideas, the great asides and the ABC Warriors. It was great nostalgia.

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The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book tore me in two. There’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind that the information in this book is great. More so it’s given me a vocabulary for describing things I knew were good. Also on the plus side there’s a good practical feel and some variation in business models and sectors which stems the fatigue of storytelling.

However, as someone (John Barton?) mentions in their review, there’s some bias (understandable but none-the-less there) to success and there’s an over-reliance on IMVU as a case study. A second edition may fill out with more diverse case studies and you’d hope some failures were examined. Finally, the Lean Startup also suffers from the hyperbole of any business book. You don’t sell an improvement, you sell nirvana.

Overall go into this book with your eyes open and prepare to feel sold at sometimes and this book will give you some good things. I’d read it again and I’ve used it in conversation with others.

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The Complete Roderick by John Thomas Sladek
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wish I liked this book more. It has all the elements that should make a classic:

Robots A dystopian future Social commentary

But sadly the book didn’t work for me. In particular: The attempts to kill Roderick seem aimlessly smashed into the book The authors tendency to call out snatches of conversation detracts from the plot Roderick is a mushy victim, even though his learning would teach him to be a ruthless, greedy misanthrope

The ending did sway me a little but it just couldn’t save the book overall.

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Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud by George Reese
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I picked up this book really looking forward to the premise. Sadly the book was a let down on a number of fronts. Specifically: The focus on Amazon AWS really detracted from general discussion of the cloud. Surely the edit could have rounded out the common refrain of you could do this with S3 but I’m not sure about anyone else. There are a large number of missing diagrams in my print. The author tends to lay out the flaws of traditional infrastructure followed by cloud issues with the same design problem. It makes you feel as though the cloud is only ready to be sold, not used in anger. Repetition was common enough to be noticeable. What is the point of Appendix A (a reference guide to the aws command line tools)? I’m trying to architect solutions not write operations manuals!

In fairness there is some good discussion about the approach to availability and some techniques for applying cloud solutions. However O’Reilly and the author could both do better than this rushed and flawed effort.”

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