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The Adrenaline Syllabus
It is an axiom of the computer industry.
Adrenaline knows that familiarity with the business and
technical literature is one of the more potent weapons in
the professional software developer's arsenal.
Adrenaline makes consistent monthly investments in our library, and
our employees are voracious readers. We even give books away with our
invoices! Take a look at our annotated bibliography.
In addition, Adrenaline scans the trade press, magazines, and zines daily. We even have lecture notes!
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Annotated Bibliography
High Tech Marketing
Moore, Geoffrey A., Crossing the Chasm, New York, Harper Business, 1991.
There's no MBA in high technology marketing, but if there were, Moore's volumes would figure prominently in the curriculum. This book is specifically about successfully getting new high technology innovations into the marketplace, allowing a new company to survive and eventually thrive. You will see that "crossing the chasm" impacts product design. It's a fantastic book full of great examples.
Moore, Geoffrey A., Inside the Tornado, New York, Harper Business, 1996.
Moore's second book is about rapid growth within high technology markets, e.g., the relational database market of the late 1980's. Companies have to change their stripes radically to thrive "inside the Tornado." The whole approach changes and so does the role of product engineering. It's another fantastic book.
High Tech Business
Grove, Andrew, Only the Paranoid Survive, New York, Harper Business, 1991.
Wonderful book from a founder of an American high technology icon, Intel. In
Grove's book, you'll learn about strategic inflection points in the high technology
industry, how to notice them and how to manage your company through them.
Stewart, Thomas A., Intellectual Capital, New York, Doubleday, 1997.
Stewart's book provides an excellent framework for understanding and managing
the modern high technology inside-out enterprise, filled with low priced
computers and high priced software developers. You'll never think the same
about evaluating or running a business again.
Software Project Management
McCarthy, Jim, Dynamics of Software Development, Redmond WA, Microsoft Press, 1995.
This book rocks! It is at once both humorous and sagacious. It focuses on the psychological issues of building winning software development teams. The book was so successful that McCarthy now runs a boot camp for software development teams. Our organizational work with startups is largely based on McCarthy's groundbreaking work.
McConnell, Steve, "Risk Analysis," in Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, Redmond WA, Microsoft Press, 1996.
This chapter is an excellent introduction to managing risks in software development projects. Once you read it, you'll ask yourself why everyone doesn't include risk analysis in project management practices. Well, Adrenaline has since day one and other organizations are starting too as well. After reading this article, you will understand what we mean when we say, "Adrenaline doesn't play with toys."
High Tech Startups
Wilson, Mike, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation, New York, William Morrow, 1997.
Oracle built their first product while doing contracts on the side and built a multi-billion dollar business without venture capital. This book tells how they did it. An interesting look at a bootstrap operation and a remarkable sales team.
Hall, Mark and Barry, John, Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems, Chicago, IL, Contemporary Books, 1990.
Sun built the first Sun workstation is about 4 months with around 20 people. In this book, you'll learn how they did this and the hoops they still had to jump through to build a winning company.
Kaplan, S. Jerrold, Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, New York, Penguin Books, 1996.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll learn quite alot about the rise and fall of a much
publicized, venture backed startup of the late 1980's and early 1990's. The characters include
Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, IBM's James Cannavino, and
Microsoft's own Bill Gates. The missing characters were a sound product and happy customers.
It's a lesson you'll take away from this book and never forget.
Information Architecture
Constantine, L. & L. Lockwood, Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models, New York, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1999.
For anyone who designs applications or Web pages professionally, Software for Use provides an appealingly written guide to user interface design. This book delivers many valuable insights on improving interfaces for both desktop applications and Web sites.
Nielson, Jakob, Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity, The New Riders Publishing, 2000.
Creating Web sites is easy. Creating sites that truly meet the needs and expectations of a wide range of online users is quite another story. In Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, renowned Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen shares his insightful thoughts on the subject. Packed with annotated examples of actual Web sites, this book sets out many of the design precepts all Web developers should follow.
Rosenfeld, Louis and Peter Morville, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, O'Reilly & Associates, 1998.
In chapter 6 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the authors discuss the details of good search-engine design. In a bitingly humorous segment, they analyze a Web site's search-page results: "Let's say you're interested in knowing what the New Jersey sales tax is.... So you go to the State of New Jersey web site and search on sales tax. The 20 results are scored at either 84% or 82% relevant. Why does each document receive only one of two scores?... And what the heck makes a document 2% more relevant than another?"
General Marketing
Ries, Al and Trout, Jack, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, New York, Harper Business, 1993.
I've talked to many people who say they read this book at least once every six months. It's that good. It's short and to the point, with tons of examples from products you probably use every day.
Beckwith, Harry, Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing, New York, Warner Books, 1997.
Software is intellectual property. The only assets that a software company has are its people. Service and content revenues command a larger and larger portion of software company revenues. This new book directly focuses on selling higher value added services and intellectual property.
Peppers, Don and Rogers, Martha Ph.D., The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time, New York, Currency Doubleday, 1996.
Why did Mirabalis, maker of ICQ, command an asking price of 100's of millions of dollars when the company had revenues of precisely $0? Why are free portal sites so hot? This book talks about the value inherent in a customer base and how to extract that value. It's a hot topic and getting hotter, radically revising the mass marketing techniques companies have employed to date. Technology is driving the revolution and the revolution is starting to drive technology, particularly on the Internet.
General Software Engineering
Stroustroup, Bjarne, "Design and Development," The C++ Programming Language 2nd Ed., 361-388, New York, Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Stroustroup is both the designer of the C++ and a great writer. We think it highly appropriate to
first hear about the importance of strong product design and project management skills from the geek
of all geeks himself. The chapter is full of carefully worded wisdom, so pay careful attention.
Brooks, Frederick P., The Mythical Man Month, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 1975.
This book is a classic. It forever dispels the myth that more people or technological innovation will
solve the "software crisis." Failing to heed Brook's advice is to invite disaster. Another super geek
author, Brooks lead the team designing OS360 for the IBM mainframe.
Booch, Grady. Object Solutions: Managing the Object-Oriented Project, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 1996.
Big surprise, after writing a highly successful book on formal object oriented design methodology,
Booch decided to write a book on project management. The milestone project structure is fully described in this book.
Booch introduces some object oriented design concepts while he's at it.
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