Book Recommendations (for Project Practice)

I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend a number of books that I've found very useful in my everyday project practice. The list isn't necessarily complete. It just includes books that I keep browsing through on a regular basis.

• Michael Mahemoff: "Ajax Design Patterns" (2006).

  With the growing popularity of Web 2.0 web application put more and more functionality into the browser using Ajax technology. This book describes how Ajax can be used properly and successfully.

• Peter Morville: "Ambient Findability — What We Find Changes Who We Become" (2005).

  In the age of the Internet findability plays an ever increasing role. If information cannot be found, it is essentially useless. This book presents valuable expertise for designing a successful web platform.

• Linda Rising, Mary Lynn Manns: Fearless Change — Patterns for Introducing New Ideas" (2005).

  It's never easy to introduce new ideas into an organisation. New ideas often correlate with a change of culture, so it's no surprise you'll sometimes meet resistance. This book offers strategies for introducing new ideas both carefully and effectively.

• Paul Dyson, Andy Longshaw: "Architecting Enterprise Solutions" (2004).

  A book on the architecture of web applications. Convincing, clear and comprehensible.

• Jim Highsmith: "Agile Software Development Ecosystems" (2002).

  There are several books on agile methods. The special thing about this book is that it contains interviews with several proponents of agile methods. This book doesn't stop at introducing the methods, it also introduces the people behind those concepts.

• Markus Völter, Alexander Schmid, Eberhard Wolff: "Server Component Patterns" (2002).

  If you'd like to understand how components work, especially in a J2EE context, then this book is for you. There aren't many books that explain technical stuff in such an easy-to-understand fashion.

• Norm Kerth: "Project Retrospectives" (2001).

  A beautiful book from the guru of project retrospectives. The book offers a practical guide to active knowledge management.

• Martin Fowler: "Refactoring — Improving the Design of Existing Code" (1999).

  Software is never complete. Virtually every software evolves over time and new functionality is added. Experience shows that the clean software structures that were set up initially easily degrade into a mess. If your software is supposed to stay maintainable, it's crucial to actively see to it that its design is kept clean. This approach is known as refactoring, and this book is the standard volume regarding this topic.

• Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: "Design Patterns" (1995).

  The first book on patterns in software. Still a classic.

• Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister: "Peopleware" (1987, 1999).

  A classic on the role that people play in software development. The book is cited frequently, yet still too many projects don't care too much about what it says. This is a book that is worth browsing every once in a while, especially when hectic dominates a project and human values seem to be drowning.

Copyright Andreas Rüping, 2009. I cannot accept responsibility for materials on other web sites to which external links from my web site may point. The owners of those sites hold the sole responsibility for their content.

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