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.

Some NOT technical talks I've seen the last two months

Interesting talks about very different topics (individuals and interactions... because we are human beings...)

• All it takes is 10 mindful minutes
• Rethinking Education David Sabine at TEDxFortMcMurray
• The power of vulnerability  Brené Brown
• Tribal leadership David Logan
• Radical wisdom for a company, a school, a life Ricardo Semler
• The Bad Idea Terminator Melissa Perri
• Build a Workplace People Love – Just add Joy Richard Sheridan at Agile India 2016. Menlo Innovations
• Making a Sandwich: Effective Feedback Techniques Dan North
• Liminal thinking The pyramid of belief 
• Think Fast, Talk Smart: Communication Techniques 
• Vulnerable honesty  Yoram Mosenzon Very inspiring talk about NVC nonviolent communication

Global code retreat Madrid 2016/10/22

This Saturday I participated in the Global day of Code Retreat event organized by Madrid Software Craftsmanship community. This was the first time I went to the a Code Retreat and I can say I like a lot very much the format.

During all the day, we was resolving the game of life, in pairs, with different restrictions and deleting all the code in each iteration... It is a very interesting deliberate practice to improve our skills, and using the same problem all the time allow us to approach using different techniques.

The best part is that in each iteration we change pairs so during the day you have the opportunity to discuss and solve the same problem with different people using very different point of view.
I think that this promiscuous pairing is the most effective way for trying new techniques and learn new insights.

Lot of thanks, the facilitator Juan D Vega, Luis Rovirosa and all the rest of the organizers from Idealista

Thanks a lot to all of my pairs: Alvaro Fidalgo, Ruben Chavarria, Oscar Pernas, Javier del Saz, Guillermo Domingez, Angel Sanz... Sorry but I don't remember the name of another person that work with Angel Sanz and me in the last iteration.

The constrains that  Juan D Vega introduced were:

1. Iteration. Ping-Pong pairing
2. Iteration. No naked primitives
3. Iteration. No Mouse + 3 minutes limit discussion
4. Iteration. No conditional statements
5. Iteration. Mute Session (impossible for me :-) )
6. Iteration. Code swap (with another pair) in the middle of the iteration. Very funny and interesting.

The most difficult one for me was the 5 iteration, because I worked with Java (and I have no idea) and not talking is very, very difficult.
The most funny and interesting iteration for me was the code swap.

For sure the next year I will repeat :)

P.D. I am happy with the code retreat, but I am very happy that two colleagues from TheMotion join me at the event (Cesar Ortiz, Ludo), and even more happy with the post-coderetreat conversations, learning, insights, etc.

References:

• Global day of Code Retreat
• Madrid Software Craftsmanship community
• Book Review: Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design
• https://github.com/SoftwareCraftsmanshipMadrid
• https://github.com/SoftwareCraftsmanshipMadrid/global-day-of-coderetreat-2016
• https://github.com/SoftwareCraftsmanshipMadrid/global-day-of-coderetreat-2016/blob/master/presentation/theday.md
• https://coderdojo.com/

Great technical talks I've seen this month

These are great talks that I've seen this month:

• 275-rr-the-evolution-of-agile-and-evolutionary-design-with-james-shore James Shore
• Software, Faster GOTO 2016 Dan North
• The silver bullet syndrome Hadi Hariri
• Lean Enterprise GOTO 2016 Barry O'Reilly
• The entity Microservice Trap (you may be doing it wrong) GOTO 2016 Fred George. Very interesting because lot of the advantages of the microservices are only available when using asynchronous messaging.
• The Economics of Software Design J.B. Rainsberger. Bad audio and very log, but lot of advice and information. Deserve the effort :)
• I Don't Know Prolog, and so Can You  Corey Haines
• Event Sourcery Sebastian von Conrad, James Ross. Very introductory but at the same time very good explanation about event sourcing.
• 7 minutes, 26 seconds, and the Fundamental Theorem of Agile Software Development  J. B. Rainsberger. Essential... and only 7:26m. (It is the fifth time I see this talk...).
• http://www.netobjectives.com/blogs/justifying-tdd-conversation-scott-bain http://www.netobjectives.net/podcasts/last20160808_podcasts.mp3 

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…