I picked up this book to gain a rich, practitioner’s
perspective on the art of product design and development. I call this art
because as any true science would propagate, there is no single way to develop
the products that customers find valuable. Knowing Tathagat and having followed his work closely over the years, i knew that this book will have practical
insights. The insights that are not overly academically oriented and are sought
with rich practical Tech. industry experience that Tathagat brings to the fore.
After having read through the book, i can very convincingly
say that- it was a time well spent reading the book. It was a time well spent
on learning. It was a time well spent on getting that additional 1% perspective
that can make a true difference to build products that positively influences the
customer's experience.
Let me first say what this book is not. This book is not a
primer on best practices. Infact, the way it is narrated- it mostly rejects the
notion of best practices. Rather it preaches practitioners to be adaptable to situations
and evolve the methodologies. Towards this, it gives insights into various
frameworks, methodologies that can be leveraged based on the contexts and
limitations under which given projects are being executed. This thinking is
quite in alignment with the spirit of Agile manifesto.
Secondly, this book does not over-glorify any single phase
of the entire process of Software development. It covers virtually all aspects
of building (does not cover marketing/selling) products including Product
management, design, development and testing. I could see this balance
beautifully maintained throughout this book.
Thirdly, this book will not make you expert in each of the
different phases in product development as quite visibly, that's not the
intention here. But it gives you an end-to-end perspective of the entire life
cycle of building the product, which not many books (atleast in my viewpoint)
provides.
In order for me to convey what this book is all about, i
would better say it with the quotes from the book that i shared (as tweets)
while reading this book. Some of them are as below-
- Deliver Not documents … but the software!
#AgilevsWaterfall
- Work estimation is not a mechanical activity. If anything,
it is a social activity.
- An old saying goes that walking on water and working on
product requirement are very easy— if only they were both frozen!
- Human-centered design is a mindset that recognizes we can
build better products by learning from our users.
- “Design is a popular subject today...in the face of
increasing competition, design is the only product differentiation"-
Deiter Rams, 1976
- "Develop customers in a similar fashion as we develop
products—start with several hypotheses and rigorously test them..." -
Steve Blank
- At last count, Google had done 178 acquisitions, Yahoo! 112,
Cisco 170, and even a company as young as Facebook had done 53 acquisitions.
- Agile takes the idea of a cross-functional team to a
“self-organizing team” which is beyond silos, adapts itself & acquire newer
competencies
- There is a saying in the Swiss Army manual—when the map
and the terrain disagree, trust the terrain!
- Processes are meant to serve people— not the other way
round.
- For today’s businesses, adaptation is key. Process is
secondary. And the specific flavor of process is a distant tertiary.
- "Agile process" is an oxymoron
- In the past man has been first. In the future the System
will be first. —Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Mgmt,
1911
- There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms
the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement, otherwise you’ve made a
discovery.
- "Reality is that following an agile process, or any
process for that matter, makes us “un-agile."
In all, the book is quite rich in references- some of which
i read during the course of reading and few others i have bookmarked for
future. This book rightly promotes Agility as a mindset and set of values and
practices rather than a written-in-stone process and it makes this point very
well. Already in my re-read list.
