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Karl Wiegers

Teoksen Software Requirements tekijä

13 teosta 779 jäsentä 7 arvostelua 1 Favorited

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Sarjat

Tekijän teokset

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Syntymäaika
1953
Sukupuoli
male

Jäseniä

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This is an excellent and humorous guide to design principles. It is filled with examples of both good and failed design in things we use every day. Karl presents almost 500 design practices with a good discussion and examples in products. He then provides 70 design lessons.

I've always thought Karl a very readable writer who makes lessons easy to understand and to remember. This should be a must-read for anyone in product design, whether technical or not.
½
 
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Nodosaurus | Jan 4, 2021 |
People in the software industry know that Karl Wiegers has a wealth of experience in software engineering, quality assurance, and SDLC in general. But they may not know that he is also a wise counselor with life lessons to share. In his recent book Pearls from Sand: How Small Encounters Lead to Powerful Lessons, he parlays those lessons into an entertaining series of stories, each with a useful message.

Each story is a chapter, and each chapter is short, which makes for very convenient short segments of time required each time you pick up the book. A coffee break, for example, is a good time to read a chapter. Once you pick it up, however, you may not want to put it down.

Near the beginning, Wiegers launches into warnings about behaviors that reduce your credibility, and people’s perception of your character. One simple example is cancelling a commitment because something came up later that you’d rather attend. He quotes Oscar Wilde’s quip about cancelling for “a subsequent engagement,” which is funny in literature, but not in real life. Wiegers goes on to warn and encourage in areas such as “active listening” instead of converting someone’s story into my story (e.g., Oh yes that happened to me too and my experience was even more amazing than yours, etc.).

Karl talks about perfectionists, expectations (managing), exercise, helping others, heroism, knowing your limits, negotiating, quality (“crap gap”), fortitude, sharing credit, leadership, knowledge-sharer vs. knowledge-conserver, teamwork, and many other important topics, each illustrated with a story or two from his personal experiences. For example, on fortitude (“Keep Getting Up” chapter), he relates the story of his uncle who suffered an endless series of tragedies and defeats throughout his life. But he met each defeat with a new idea on “what to do next,” which consistently converted setbacks into triumphs. Despite a life plagued by crushing blows, the man kept up an unquenchable good humor, such that no one would ever guess the severe hardships he was enduring.

Every chapter is filled with great stories like the “Keep Getting Up” episode. One chapter is on commitment to lifelong learning (“For Whom the School Bell Tolls”). It serves to remind and inspire the reader to pursue education in life, in your special talents, in whatever fulfills you, and keep pursuing it while you still draw breath. Like the other stories, it is useful as a reminder of what’s important, and as an inspiration to go after what’s important. His stories also give useful insights on how to do things better, in almost every area of life and career.

I can’t summarize every chapter, but you get the idea. Each story pays back the reader amply for time spent reading. As in all Wiegers’ books, his lucid, compelling writing style helps keep the pages turning with pleasure. This book in particular adds a rich life-experience plot line that makes every page very meaningful on a personal level. Karl’s Pearls from Sand is sort of like a cross between Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea and Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, adapted for the twenty-first-century professional. Whether you’re familiar with those other books or not, you’ll gain a lot of valuable Pearls of wisdom and entertaining stories from Karl Wiegers’ Pearls from Sand.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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Coutre | Dec 23, 2020 |
Karl is an excellent author, making things easy to understand and follow. When you read his work, you can hear him speaking to you, he writes very much the way he speaks.

I only read selective chapters of this book, but I got from it what I expected to learn. In those sections he addressed issues relative to writing. Everything form organization, topic selection, editing and publishing. The rest of the book may yet be beconing to me.
½
 
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Nodosaurus | Apr 21, 2020 |
awesome book on best practices for software, it keep you aligned according to best practice standards
 
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olumba72 | 1 muu arvostelu | Oct 25, 2016 |

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Teokset
13
Jäseniä
779
Suosituimmuussija
#32,680
Arvio (tähdet)
3.9
Kirja-arvosteluja
7
ISBN:t
34
Kielet
3
Kuinka monen suosikki
1

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