Getting Real by 37signals is an ebook that I bought it when it releases. It consists a bunch of essays to create and manage a better software company.
Based on 37signals’ software design philosophy, it forces you to think again on your business and development model:
Getting Real delivers better results because it forces you to deal with the actual problems you’re trying to solve instead of your ideas about those problems. It forces you to deal with reality.
Getting Real foregoes functional specs and other transitory documentation in favor of building real screens. A functional spec is make-believe, an illusion of agreement, while an actual web page is reality. That’s what your customers are going to see and use. That’s what matters. Getting Real gets you there faster. And that means you’re making software decisions based on the real thing instead of abstract notions.
Finally, Getting Real is an approach ideally suited to web-based software. The old school model of shipping software in a box and then waiting a year or two to deliver an update is fading away. Unlike installed software, web apps can constantly evolve on a day-to-day basis. Getting Real leverages this advantage for all its worth.
And guess what, now they’ve released the ebook free in html version.
I will not regret to pay $19 for it, but now it is pretty bargain for everyone because it is free.
Getting Real – [37signals]
