Predigested experience
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Predigested experience appears to be what this book attempts to offer. A wealth of management and software development observations are offered up, presumably to enable practitioners to recognize them when they encounter them in their own situations, as opposed to discovering everything for the first time for themselves.
I've no quarrel with any of the observations they make, having seen many at first hand myself. The book is easy to read, I polished it off in about half a day. If you search on google for the usefully-rare phrase of "template zombie" you may be able to find a sample from the book which describes the patterns of "dead fish" and "film critic". That sample will probably give you a far better idea of whether the book is for you or not, than this review can.
Personally, I enjoyed the book - and found it somewhat interesting and relevant. However, it does draw from a lot of background knowledge which it doesn't attempt to explain or provide references for, suggesting it is aimed at practicing managers rather than academics? As it is, I suspect it will be more useful to someone who has SOME kind of software project knowledge already, either by working on one ( in any capacity ) or on some kind of software/management course, so as not to be 'thrown off' by offhand references to methodologies like SCRUM.
For what it's worth, altavista/babelfish translates "Seelenverwandtschaft" as "soul relationship".
Overall impression - interesting and worthwhile, although I would probably have been happier with a full references/bibliography list at the end, as well as a glossary. And I'm still trying to figure out where the New Zealand connection comes from - doesn't seem to appear in any of the short biographies of the authors. Four stars out of five.
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