The First Tempo! Reader Comment

I have been anxiously waiting for comments from Tempo! readers. A book is like a baby: A great investment of time, effort and emotion.

Torbjörn Gyllebring bought one of the first copies. He posted the following on Twitter:
@Kallokain I'm quite inclined to call Tempo! the "Slack" of Business Management that's a good thing :)
Joy!!! In case you haven't read it, Slack by Tom DeMarco is one of the best management books ever written. It is so good that it is actually useful. Slack was the book that got me interested in management.

Once I publish something I just want people to like it and find it useful.

I do not care greatly if Tempo! becomes a great seller. (Though it would be nice, of course.) I do care a great deal about whether readers enjoy the book and find it useful.

I care a great deal about who reads Tempo!. There are ideas in the book that I believe are very important, and worth spreading. If the ideas take root in the right minds, well, who knows what might happen...

It is not my intention to turn my blog into an advertising forum for a book. That would be boring for both you and me. However, I do hope you forgive me if I do go on a bit about Tempo! for the next month or so. Finally seeing the book in print gave me feelings I cannot describe. If I could describe them, I'd probably be a very successful fiction writer right now :-)

As always, my blog posts are few and far between when I am working long hours. I am heavily backlogged at the moment. I have promised to finish the Primus Vicus series of videocasts. I am working on an English translation of Tempo!. I am falling behind on blogging, tweeting, and participating in various forums. I have cut down on reading email, just skimming anything that does not require an answer. Of course, I want to write more books, and make more (and better) videocasts. I need to write one more issue of the Tempo! support newsletter soon. And, oh yes, I recently joined Business Network International (BNI).

Lot's of things to do. Lot's of things to write about. Right now though, I'll go to bed.

Comments

Unknown said…
Looking forward to the English version of Tempo!
April 03, 2010 11:36 PM
Kallokain said…
Thanks!

I have translated a couple of pages this weekend, but the going is still slow. To much work in the pipeline.
April 05, 2010 4:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waterfall vs. Agile: Battle of the Dunces or A Race to the Bottom?

Image
The major software methodology wars since the mid 1950’s. Someone was wrong on the Internet, so here we go… In a recent HBR article, It’s Time to End the Battle Between Waterfall and Agile , the author sets up a false premise: There is a war between Waterfall methodology and Agile. The war must end. And finally, you can combine the approaches to get the best of both worlds. This sounds good, but the article is based on a misunderstanding of both Waterfall and Agile. Also, there is no war between Waterfall methodology and Agile. There can’t be, because Waterfall methodology does not exist! Waterfall is a name for large projects that failed in the 1960’s. Waterfall was never a methodology, but a failure to apply the methodologies that existed back then. As I will show towards the end of this article, at least one of the “successful” Waterfall projects mentioned in the HBR article was neither successful, nor a Waterfall project. I got invaluable help from Alistair Cockburn. He fact che...
Read more

Performance Evaluations, Business Strategy, and Agile Methodologies

Image
It is performance evaluation time in many companies. This can be stressful, both to the people being evaluated, and the people doing the evaluation. In companies adopting agile software development methods, the tension can be extraordinary. Individual performance evaluations run counter to agile philosophy, which emphasizes team performance over individual performance. However, managers and corporate leaders need to take a few steps back, and consider the impact performance evaluations have on the organization as a whole. Especially now, in the midst of a recession, it is important to look at a companies current policies to see if they can be improved, or if they are actually holding the company back. So, how can a manager evaluate policy? Performance evaluation policies can serve as an excellent example. I'll confine myself to discussing the so-called ‘rank and yank’ methods. These are performance reviews were employees are ranked using a forced ranking system. It usually looks so...
Read more

Agile Requirements Structures, Part 1

Image
If you have worked in large Agile projects or programs, you may have noticed that there is often quite a bit of confusion about requirements, what the requirement types are, their purpose, how to write them, how to use them, and above all, what not to do with them. There are many causes for this confusion. Here are some of the more common I have seen: Nobody in the organization has read up on the requirements model it is using, so everyone makes their own interpretation. The organization deviates from a standard requirements model, but nobody knows which standard model the organization is deviating from, and/or there is no agreement about how they deviate from it. The organization has not documented its own requirements model very well. The organization mixes two or more different requirements models, often without realizing it. The organization has documented its requirements model, but finding the documentation is an epic project in itself, on par with when Henry Sta...
Read more