 | Bob Lewis's IS Survival Guide author: Bob Lewis asin: 0672314371 binding: Paperback list price: $24.99 USD amazon price: $24.99 |
Lewis is a very good writer and many enjoy his popular Infoworld column and his "management speak." This is a very good book, very easy to read and the results hierarchy described in this book is the basis for my approach to program and portfolio management, project governance, and the framework for linking ALL activities in an I.T. shop back to the business.
 | Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees author: Jon R. Katzenbach asin: 0875849369 binding: Hardcover list price: $35.00 USD amazon price: $23.10 USD |
What a breath of fresh air. Now here's a novel idea: the list of good things to do is almost endless and any of us could start making such a list. The things on it will almost all have merit individually. The trick then is this: which subset of all those "good things to do" is the right subset to apply for my organization? Katzenbach has gone out and studied successful organizations and classified them. He has then studied the subsets of "good things to do" for each organization classiifcation. Brilliant! This book puts a TON of other management and HR books in their place.
 | Patterns of Software System Failure and Success author: Capers Jones asin: 1850328048 binding: Paperback list price: $44.95 USD amazon price: $44.95 |
Capers Jones is the metrics guru. Don't just speculate or assume what the affect of some thing is or its characteristics. Jones has measured thousands of projects from hundreds of organizations and then mined and analyzed that real project data for us.
 | Software Fundamentals: Collected Papers by David L. Parnas author: Daniel M. Hoffman David M. Weiss asin: 0201703696 binding: Paperback list price: $49.95 USD amazon price: $39.96 USD |
A superb book from one of the great minds in I.T. Worth it just for the brilliant essay on why requirements will always be difficult (but we should never stop trying) - A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It. But the bonus is that all the other papers in the book are very, very good too.
 | Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems author: James A. Highsmith III asin: 0932633404 binding: Paperback list price: $44.95 USD amazon price: $40.45 USD |
What a great, great book and worthy of all the praise and recognition it has received. A must read even if you are not interested in Jim's Adaptive method - this a great I.T. book.
 | The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It author: Michael E. Gerber asin: 0887307280 binding: Paperback list price: $16.95 USD amazon price: $11.53 USD |
Great little book. Very easy to read. Some good lessons here.
 | Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things: Patterns, Poetry... author: Richard P. Gabriel asin: 020172183X binding: Paperback list price: $34.99 USD amazon price: $34.99 |
This is an amazing book. The first time I read it I thought "yeah, ok." Not long after, messages in it were really started to pound on me so I went back and read it again. Wow - so much there that I didn't reallly absorb the first time through. Each time I've read it, I get more and more out of it. Don't misunderstand me - it is not that the book is hard to read or inaccessible. Quite the opposite. It is that each time I am able to get even more out of the messages and teachings within it. Like many things, it can all look so simple on the surface, but as you learn a little bit you are able to see so much more (rinse and repeat 
)
I adapted the interactive workshop approach described in this book to an e-mail based multi-stage review system for article writing and it has worked spectacularly well for me.
 | Handbook of Walkthroughs, Inspections, and Technical Reviews: Evaluating Programs, Projects, and Pro author: Daniel P. Freedman Gerald M. Weinberg asin: 0932633196 binding: Hardcover list price: $49.95 USD amazon price: $39.96 USD |
This is the book I use for my approach to inspections on FDD projects. I used forms straight out of this book and my inspection system (the publishing, the feedback loop though to dynamic checklists and related issues, etc.) were all heavily influenced by this book. Gilb also writes well on inspections but I find his book a much tougher read than this one. This book is far more accessible and hence practical.
FYI - my direct influence from inspections was using them for several years during my time as a developer at IBM's Rochester Programming Laboratory.
 | Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. author: Tom DeMarco Timothy Lister asin: 0932633439 binding: Paperback list price: $33.95 USD amazon price: $33.95 |
Another of the books everyone in I.T. should read. I practice many of the things in this book on my projects. This is the book that talks about office layouts and environments, interruptions and their affect on reimmersion time for creative workers, anti-team practices (i.e. don't do them!) and so on. Also, this second edition contains a nice short summary of Virginia Satir's change model - which I teach on all my projects and multi-day workshops.
 | Why Does Software Cost So Much?: And Other Puzzles of the Information Age author: Tom Demarco asin: 093263334X binding: Paperback list price: $29.95 USD amazon price: $26.95 USD |
I don't agree with everything in this book (including the title essay). However, it contains the best 5 pages on management ever written - the Standing Naked In The Snow chapter. It's a must read just for that.
