Book Club Articles

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
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SEP Book Review of Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Rocket Surgery Really is Easy!

I just finished reading Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug (perhaps you know him from his other book Don’t Make Me Think). Here’s what I thought. What’s the point? Learn how to do usability testing yourself to gain most of the benefits of hiring someone to do it and lose most of the negatives […]
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SEP Book Review of The Toyota Way

Book Review – The Toyota Way – Jeffrey Liker

What’s the point? This book focuses on Toyota’s manufacturing process and the Lean attributes. The book takes you through the philosophy and the bare bones implementation of the production models and practices that make the Toyota Way sustainable in other companies. The interesting point of the book was that there were many companies claiming to […]
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SEP Book Review for Coaching for Improved Work Performance

Book Review – Coaching for improved work performance – Ferdinand Fournies

What’s the point? This book focuses on the idea that you can get better performance out of employees through positive coaching. Rarely do negative actions result in anything other than fear and poor performance. The book gives techniques and tips for improving performance and tackling potential problems. Strategies are presented for dealing with employees that […]
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Book Review – User Stories Applied For Agile Software Development – Mike Cohn

What’s the point? This book takes you through the formulation of user stories, from perspectives that should be considered (user, tester, manager, etc…) to some guidelines that should be applied (Is it testable, is it estimateable, etc…). The book shows how a team can use estimated user stories to determine releases and iterations. How was […]
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Book Club: ProGit

Book Club Foreword A couple years ago I brought up the idea of doing a book club here at SEP because I had participated in a couple before coming to SEP, but we called them SEDG (coined by Steve McConnell in Professional Software Development).  I don’t really like that term, so we called it book […]
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Book Review – Beautiful Teams

I got beautiful teams a few months ago and tore into it hoping for lots of wonderful insights about how to help culture/foster/create functional and beautiful team environments. Instead, I ended up with a collection of stories from some people (some of which I’ve heard of, most of which I haven’t) that have been on […]
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3Q Book Review: The Trusted Advisor

The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Robert Galford, and Charles Green What’s the point? A friend of my boss recommended this book as “the bible of the professional service firm.” I have to admit it’s the first time I thought of my company that way. After reading it, I heartily agree. The book talks […]
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3Q Book Review: The Logic of Failure

The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner What’s the point? The premise of the book is that humans are notoriously bad at thinking through complex systems. We can’t plan or predict well and we don’t manage them well once we’re entangled in them. He presents a number of studies (real life and experiments) to explore […]
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3Q Book Review: Linchpin

I really hate opening a blog post and seeing that it’s five pages long, 7 point font, dense text. Even if the author is awesome, it’s asking me to make a relatively big commitment. I’ll try not to be part of the problem … from now on, I’m going to do any book reviews in […]
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