An introduction to general systems thinking
Use Team-Based Review Sessions to Maximize What You Learn from Each Project With detailed scenarios, imaginative illustrations, and step-by-step instructions, consultant and speaker Norman L. Kerth guides readers through productive, empowering retrospectives of project performance. Whether your shop calls them postmortems or postpartums or something else, project retrospectives offer organizations a formal method for preserving the valuable lessons learned from the successes and failures of every project. These lessons and the changes identified by the community will foster stronger teams and savings on subsequent efforts. For a retrospective to be effective and successful, though, it needs to be safe. Kerth shows facilitators and participants how to defeat the fear of retribution and establish an air of mutual trust. One tool is Kerth's Prime Directive: Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he or she could, given what was known at the time, his or her skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand. Applying years of experience as a project retrospective facilitator for software organizations, Kerth reveals his secrets for managing the sensitive, often emotionally charged issues that arise as teams relive and learn from each project. Don't move on to your next project without consulting and using this readable, practical handbook.
Stats for nerds
24recommend
41mentions
31people
2009–2026years
78% recommend20% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald Weinberg. I've found his writing style to really land with my brain.
- A couple favorites that haven't been mentioned:
'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking', Weinberg, and he's got a dozen more worthwhile books behind it.
'The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations', Dietrich Dorner
- Mindset and leadership (explore other titles by Gerald M. Weinberg as well)
- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking
- Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach
So that you have a good answer to "when will it be ready"
- Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
- Agile Estimating and Planning
People management
- The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
- High Output Management
Besides Mythical Man Month already mentioned in other comments.
- My three favorites from Gerald Weinberg:
1. 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully' I was put off for a decade by the click-bait title but this is a profound little book that helped me get perspective on problem solving in my work and myself.
2. 'Becoming a Technical Leader' The text is great; working the exercises for yourself will make you a stronger thinker.
3. 'An Introduction to General Systems Thinking' One of his densest, driest books, but a great summary of the highlights of the field with plenty of thought problems in the exercises and plenty of pointers for digging deeper.
- The best book on software testing was written in 1974 and doesn’t mention testing: Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Jerry Weinberg.
The best book on consulting is by the same guy: Secrets of Consulting.
- "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking" by Gerald M. Weinberg [0] was highly influential to me. I still often use his "systems triumvirate" when I have to sort out bigger-picture problems:
1. Why do I see what I see?
2. Why do things stay the same?
3. Why do things change?
Related
2009–2026
The psychology of computer programming
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Thinking in systems
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Seeing systems
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Becoming a technical leader
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Quality Software Management
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Secrets of Consulting
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