Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

This volume provides the opening work in Christopher Alexander's seminal trilogy on architecture (continued in A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment). Here he provides a fascinating introduction to the ideas behind the succeeding two books.

Good to Great

Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

by Jim Collins

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years,... (more)

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

by Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres

Software development projects can be fun, productive, and even daring. Yet they can consistently deliver value to a business and remain under control. Extreme Programming (XP) was conceived and developed to address the specific needs of software development conducted by small teams in the face of vague and changing requirements. This new lightweight methodology challenges many conventional tenets, including... (more)

Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures: Concepts, Challenges, Recommendations

Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures: Concepts, Challenges, Recommendations

by James McGovern

Conventional wisdom of the "software stack" approach to building applications may no longer be relevant. Enterprises are pursuing new ways of organizing systems and processes to become service oriented and event-driven. Leveraging existing infrastructural investments is a critical aspect to the success of companies both large and small. Enterprises have to adapt their systems to support frequent technological... (more)

Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, 1/e

Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, 1/e

by Carl Kessler

"Outside-in thinking complements any approach your teams may be taking to the actual implementation of software, but it changes how you measure success. A successful outside-in team does a lot of learning and not much speculation." —Tom Poppendieck Build Software That Delivers Maximum Business Value to Every Key Stakeholder Imagine your ideal development project. It will deliver exactly what your clients need.... (more)

Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges

Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges

by C. Otto Scharmer

In this ground-breaking book, Otto Scharmer invites us to see the world in new ways. Fundamental problems, as Einstein once noted, cannot be solved at the same level of thought that created them. What we pay attention to, and how we pay attention - both individually and collectively - is key to what we create. What often prevents us from attending is what Scharmer calls our blind spot, the inner place from which... (more)

Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

by Tom Demarco, Peter Hruschka, Tim Lister, Suzanne Robertson, James Robertson, Steve McMenamin

Adrenaline junkies, dead fish, project sluts, true believers, Lewis and Clark, template zombies . . . Most developers, testers, and managers on IT projects are pretty good at recognizing patterns of behavior and gut-level hunches, as in, I sense that this project is headed for disaster. But it has always been more difficult to transform these patterns and hunches into a usable form, something a team can debate,... (more)

The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays

The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays

by Martin Heidegger

"To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure. The essays in this volume--intriguing, challenging, and often baffling to the reader--call him always to abandon all superficial scanning and to enter wholeheartedly into the serious pursuit of thinking.... "Heidegger is not a 'primitive' or a 'romanitic.' He is not one who seeks escape from the burdens and responsibilities of contemporary life into serenity,... (more)

Community: The Structure of Belonging (Bk Business)

Community: The Structure of Belonging (Bk Business)

by Peter Block

Modern society is plagued by fragmentation. The various sectors of our communities--businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government--do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not... (more)

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Tags: questions concerning technology

Timeless Way of Building

by Christopher Alexander