Books I have read in the last 12 months

One year ago I started to work at TheMotion and at the same time I decided to recover my previous reading habit. I also discovered the audio books that are a very good choice for me, because I go for a walk (1-2h) every day... The only problem is that not all the books that I like are in this format....
In any case, these are the books I have read / heard during this time at TheMotion...

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Charles Duhigg   (Pending review)
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Tony Hsieh   (Pending review)
• Drive. Daniel Pink   (Review)
• Designing data intensive applications. Martin kleppmann   (Review)
• Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual. John Sonmez   (Pending review)
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Nassim Nicholas Taleb   (Review)
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. Ben Horowitz   (Pending review)
• Start-Up Nation: The story of Isreal’s Economic Miracle.  Dan Senor, Saul Singer   (Pending review)
• Por Un Scrum Popular: Notas para una Revolución Ágile. Tobias Mayer, Alan Cyment (Review)
• Cómo vivimos y cómo podríamos vivir. William Morris (Review)
• Un nuevo estilo de relaciones. Koldo Saratxaga (Review)
• The Nature of Software Development. Ron Jeffries (Review)
• I Heart Logs: Event Data, Stream Processing, and Data Integration. Jay Kreps (Review)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie (Review)
• The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software. Jonathan Rasmusson (Review)
• The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company. Rossman, John * (Review)
• The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence. Stoller, Jacob (Review)
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Eliyahu M. Goldratt  (Review)
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Peter Thiel (Review)
• The Lean Enterprise: How Corporations Can Innovate Like Startups. Trevor Owens (Review)
• Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman (Review)
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. James P. Womack (Pending review) 
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Tom DeMarco (Pending review) (Second Read)
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests. Steve Freeman (Pending review)
• Inceptions. Enrique Comba (Review)
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Eric Ries (Review)
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win. Gene Kim (Review)
• How Google Works. Schmidt, Eric (Review)
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business. Clayton M. Christensen (Review)

For me, the most interesting books of this list are:

Thinking, Fast and Slow. 

Daniel Kahneman (Review)

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win. 

Gene Kim (Review)

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb   (Pending review)

The Nature of Software Development. 

Ron Jeffries (Review)

This books made me think, change some of my point of view, or inspired me...

I will continue to enjoy my habit...

And, of course, if anyone want to have a discussion about the topics in these books, I will be more than pleased... :)

Book Review: The Innovator's dilemma

The Innovator's Dilemma

Interesting book that highlights the importance of "growth/experimentation" mindset for creating products/services in a very fast changing environment.

It is part of the base of other books as "The Lean Startup" from Eric Ries.

It explains very clearly the difference between incremental improvements to a product and disruptive products or technology. Giving real examples and explaining the different approaches we can use to create disruptive products from diferent points of view (economic, management, motivation, etc)

Good reading for managers trying to enter the world of innovation and startups. If you are already convinced that the "classic management" is not useful to create innovation, perhaps other readings can be more interesting (ex: The Lean Mindset or The Lean Startup).

Anyway a great book.

Book Review: Cómo Vivimos Y Cómo Podríamos Vivir

This post is in Spanish because I read this book in Spanish. I also think that there is no english version of this book (even if the content is from some original speeches in English).

Cómo vivimos y cómo podríamos vivir

Trabajo útil o esfuerzo inútil

El arte bajo la plutocracia

William Morris

Inspirador libro sobre al trabajo y el arte entendido como esencia del esfuerzo humano en un contexto en el que la productividad, el “crecimiento” y el consumo desbocado parece la medida del éxito. Podría parecer el mensaje de alguien abrumado por el ritmo de la sociedad actual, pero lo más gracioso es que es el mensaje de un diseñador textil, artista y revolucionario socialista en pleno apogeo de la revolución industrial.

El libro me ha resultado curioso, muy inspirador, y con algunas ideas sobre las que merece la pena reflexionar. El contenido del libro son transcripciones de discursos que luego fueron publicados en diversas revistas socialistas de la época. Hay que tener muy en cuenta el contexto histórico y el formato de los escritos para que no nos impida ver el trasfondo del mensaje.

En mi caso me ha impactado esa idea de crecimiento sostenible (no artificial) y arte como parte inherente del trabajo. Con estas premisas William Morris presenta la posibilidad de crear una sociedad en la que el trabajo sea parte intrínseca del desarrollo de cada persona en vez de un mal necesario para conseguir “cosas” cuya necesidad nos hemos creado artificialmente.

El mensaje de Morris ha sentado las bases ideológicas para el renacer del movimiento de artesanía que se ve en varias disciplinas actuales (diseño, software, makers, etc). Por supuesto que no se ha alcanzado nada parecido a su propuesta, lo que no invalida la aportación de sus ideas y la necesidad de tenerlas en cuenta en esta “acelerada” sociedad actual.

Hacia tiempo te no tenia este tipo de lecturas y aunque al principio me encontré un poco fuera de juego por falta de costumbre, enseguida conseguí sumergirme en su lectura y en una profunda reflexión. Finalmente lo he disfrutado mucho.

Gracias Saski por la recomendación y el préstamo…

Book Review: Un nuevo estilo de relaciones: para el cambio organizacional pendiente

This post is in Spanish because the book is in Spanish and I think that there is no translation to English

Un nuevo estilo de relaciones: para el cambio organizacional pendiente 

Koldo Saratxaga 

El libro, aunque interesante y fácil de leer no me ha aportado mucho más que las charlas/presentaciones que he visto de Koldo. Tiene algunos detalles y algunos ejemplos más, pero muchos de ellos son pequeñas anecdotas, que no aportan más detalle a las prácticas que promulga.

Por supuesto el mensaje de Koldo Saratxaga acerca del Nuevo Estilo de Relaciones es muy interesante y merece la pena conocerlo, asi que se puede empezar por este libro o por alguna de sus charlas (como la keynote que dio en la CAS del 2013)


Referencias y más bibliografía:

• http://loslibrosdek2k.com/
• http://www.k2kemocionando.com/k2kemocionando.html

Book Review: Por Un Scrum Popular: Notas para una Revolución Ágil

This post is in Spanish because the book is in Spanish and is not exactly a translation, it have a different content than the original.

Por Un Scrum Popular: Notas para una Revolución Ágil

Tobias Mayer (Autor), Alan Cyment  (Autor, Traductor)

La lectura de este libro me ha resultado de lo más sorprendente. El libro está compuesto de una serie de ensayos cortos de Tobias Mayer complementados por anexos creados por Alan Cyment. Con este formato se ha generado una especie de diálogo entre los dos autores, Tobias, como el autor original de los ensayos y Alan (de cierta manera uno de sus discípulos), como coautor y traductor.

Para cada ensayo Alan amplia la idea original, la pone al día o aporta nuevas ideas y en algunos casos incluso la enfrenta de forma constructiva.
Debido a este formato, el resultado es excelente, es muchísimo más que una traducción. Una gran idea.

En cuanto al contenido, para mi, este Scrum que describen es el esencial, el basado fuertemente en valores y cultura, el que habla de una forma distinta de trabajar a nivel de toda la empresa y no describe/prescribe un método de organización y gestión para equipos de desarrolladores.

Ni que decir tiene que estoy completamente alineado con el Scrum descrito por Tobias o por ese Scrum (orgánico) descrito por Alan en el que la reflexión en las retrospectivas y el timeboxing generan un marco para permitir que lo que sea necesario brote.
Cada uno de los ensayos nos puede aportar una profunda reflexión sobre cómo trabajamos y cómo nos relacionamos como organización.

Si buscas un libro que describa la mecánica de Scrum, este NO es el libro. Pero si conoces Scrum, consideras que somos personas incluso mientras trabajamos, este libro te puede hacer reflexionar, abrirte nuevas vías…

Un gran libro...

Book Review: How to win friend & influence people

How to win friend & Influence people

A very useful book about the social interactions and how can we improve our capacity to achieve our goals in a very collaborative/social world. The title sounds like a collection of dirty Jedi mind tricks, but in fact is a collection of good behaviors that can help us to achieve our goals looking always for a win win situation.

Is very easy to read and have a lot of practical examples.
I think that it deserve a deep reading and put in practice the tips/behaviors from the book...

Book Review: Thinking Fast Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Thinking Fast Slow, Daniel Kahneman

IMHO a must read for any human being. In my case it changes how I think about the thinking process and make me more conscious about my own reactions, decisions, limitations, etc.

A great book, It have good explanations and a lot of examples and experiments. In fact, the experiments some times can be a little boring. I think that there is another "simplified" version that perhaps has less number of experiments or with less detail. Anyway, this version or the other is a complete must read...

The author explains the two different "thinking systems", the system one that is fast, intuitive, emotional and cheap in terms of energy and the system two that is rational, logical, deliberative and for sure, slower and with higher energy consumption. We usually identify ourselves with the second one, but in fact we use the first one almost all the time. The book help us to identify this systems, recognize when we are using each one and even how we can make conscious efforts to use the system two or train/improve the system one.

Very interesting reading.

If you doesn't have the time you can show this presentation Fast and Slow" | Talks at Google

Book Reviews: Some books I recently read

The Lean Startup Eric Ries A great and practical book on how to sistematicaly apply the cientific method in the context of startups. I think this is the "must read" book for any startup.
I am very surprised to discover that there are a lot of startup than don't apply this method or even don't know about its existence. I think that is unforgivable mistake...
This book starts a movement to make a very cost effective "business discovery" processes :)

The Amazon Way John Rossman. A interesting book about a strong culture with  a very deep/interiorized values. Easy reading and very well structured. Interesting to get ideas, but not all of them are for me :)

The Lean CEO Javob Stoller Interesting vision about the needed support from the CEO for any Lean transformation. From the book you can derive that without this kind of support any transformation of this kind is doomed to fail... We need more of this open minded CEOs :)

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox. A very interesting book narrated as a novel about a transformation to Lean. Some very interesting metaphors, tips and even the mind process to archive the profound change needed.
Very interesting for industrial manufacturing, but If you come from the IT/Software development bussines, is better to read the The Phoenix Project that have the same structure but for IT context. Anyway is an excelent book that deserves a carful reading if you are interested in lean.

Zero to One Peter Thiel, Blake Masters. Interesting book about the diferents way of thinking to create a completly new markets and real innovation. A complementary book for The Innovator's dilemma but in my case, I don't think that this book changed my way of thinking... A good reading anyway.

The Lean Enterprise: How Corporations Can Innovate Like Startups Trevor Owens, Obie Fernandez. Is funny becouse I read this book becouse a confusion... I wanted to read http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Enterprise-Performance-Organizations-Innovate/dp/1449368425 but I just buy the wrong one, so for sure is not the content I was looking for ;)
Anyway is an interesting book very focused on how structure different organizations to innovate even in a context that make ir very difficult. The content does indeep overlap with The Innovator's dilemma so it give me some perspective but no new points of view.


For past reviews, see my reviews at goodreads

Book Review: The Phoenix Project. Gene Kim

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win.

Entertaining and instructive. The cult novel for the DevOps movement. It have a very ops related point of view, but is also very interesting for the software development, in fact, nowadays there is no so much difference.

Great book with lots of information on the development of Lean and DevOps software and great lessons on how to implement it.
I'm not used to this format for a highly technical book, but I must admit that a novel is a very good way to remember the concepts (and even, to empathize with the characters).

Recommended for anyone in a business with a strong technology base (almost every business today).

Very funny, entertaining... A must...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project

Book Review: How Google Works. Eric Schmidt

This book contains some interesting facts about how Google, as a company, works, but IMHO only the first half is interesting, the rest is a bit repetitive.

The book contains many anecdotes, but many of them are not interesting or simply repeat a concept already discussed previously.

Entertaining but I have not learned as much as intended.





https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23158207-how-google-works

Book Review: The Lean Mindset. Ask the Right Questions

Great book that explains using real examples, the lean thinking applied to product development, software mainly, but not only.

It has substantially changed my way of dealing with software projects. It has helped me to focus more on the objectives / intrinsic problems to solve, relegating the normal flow of creating software continuously without really asking myself "why".

I recommend this book to anyone in product development (not only software), especially to all  passionate developers that sometimes forget "why" we develop software.

“What’s next is to stop thinking about software development as a delivery process and to start thinking of it as a problem-solving process, a creative process.”

And remember:

“There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”

Passionate developer, Read it now!!!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/18635263
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Mindset-Right-Questions/dp/0321896904

Thanks @pasku1 for the recommendation...