Rating: 
Summary: Fresh Thinking/Practical Focus.
Review: The format and presentation make it an easy,entertaining read. However, there is some great insight that can be harvested and used in a very practical way. It provides a clear understanding of the drivers behind some of the typical behaviors we see every day. It's a huge advantage to be able to understand and anticipate how groups interact.I would recommend it to anyone in the IT trenches.
Rating: 
Summary: required reading for development team leaders & developers
Review: The Manager Pool is a provocative book on development team leadership, written by a developer and an ex-developer manager. Having been in the trenches myself, I greatly appreciated just about all the leadership techniques (expressed in pattern form) espoused in the book. An example and particular favorite is Shameless Ignoramus, which recommends that managers should avoid the temptation to try and know all the technical details. I'm certain that this book will rankle many feathers, and probably be dismissed out-of-hand as a couple of developers trying to stir the pot. So be it. I suspect that it'll end up being one of those books that states the obvious to those who read it, and those who need it won't read it. I'd like to see perhaps more patterns, and a bit more detail on how the patterns actually produced the highly touted results as claimed by the authors. The book's presentation was excellent. Well-edited and well-written. It was a very quick read (each of the "patterns" are three or four pages), and looks to act as a good reference as well.
Rating:
Summary: required reading for development team leaders & developers
Review: The Manager Pool is a provocative book on development team leadership, written by a developer and an ex-developer manager. Having been in the trenches myself, I greatly appreciated just about all the leadership techniques (expressed in pattern form) espoused in the book. An example and particular favorite is Shameless Ignoramus, which recommends that managers should avoid the temptation to try and know all the technical details. I'm certain that this book will rankle many feathers, and probably be dismissed out-of-hand as a couple of developers trying to stir the pot. So be it. I suspect that it'll end up being one of those books that states the obvious to those who read it, and those who need it won't read it. I'd like to see perhaps more patterns, and a bit more detail on how the patterns actually produced the highly touted results as claimed by the authors. The book's presentation was excellent. Well-edited and well-written. It was a very quick read (each of the "patterns" are three or four pages), and looks to act as a good reference as well.
Rating:
Summary: Good but light on details
Review: Yet another good basic book for managing software projects. Should be required reading for first time software managers, and again when they are promoted once more. By then if they haven't got these techniques down, they should go back to development. It's a good compilment to the patterns of "failed project" etc. at the pattern language web page. BTW what is often called "Radical" is only applying what should have been known at the time, and is now considered common practice. (Which is also an oxymoron as common practice often isn't.)
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