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| Do It Yourself - More On The Subject | ||
As I mentioned in a previous article on doing-it-yourself that gave some leads for training classes, resources are being stretched further these days than ever before. Customers seem more likely to be forced to take on extra responsibilities than ever before. This article will not try to list books to relate to all the technical aspects of your jobs. These days, it is easy-enough to walk over to the nearest bookstore and buy a multitude of books on most technical subjects. Instead, this article will focus on some of the books and magazines that I find helpful on a continuing basis or that I found to be extra-special in some way. You might think that some of these books are probably outdated by looking at the publishing date, but I include them as their concepts and the problems they outline are not. I do include just a few technical books, below, but just because I found them so exceptional for my own purposes. At the end of this article, I also list a few places to look for these and other books. Now, if you can just find the time in your busy schedule to read a few chapters, you will be all set. Ongoing Resources (Magazines) On an ongoing basis, magazines are my favorite sources of information, for the most obvious reasons that the articles tend to be short and to-the-point, and I can tear them out to read later. I particularly try to keep-up with “Scientific Computing & Instrumentation” (www.scimag.com) and not just because it publishes my articles, but because it helps me keep-up with what is going on in the LIMS industry. Another choice is “Bio-IT World” (www.bioitworld.com) which leans more toward information as it relates to IT in the Biosciences, as the name would indicate. Being a member of PMI (the Project Management Institute) (www.pmi.org), I receive their magazines, in which I find useful project management articles. If you are doing any project management, I would highly recommend this membership, if just to get the magazines. Books Over the years, I have maintained a collection of my favorite business books. This is a list of the ones that I tend to recommend to people the most often. Each book is listed, followed by a paragraph about it, with the authors, publishing company and date published immediately following. Technical UNIX for the Impatient Occasionally, I need to use UNIX and, when I do, I just want to finish whatever it is that I need to do. The format of this book works better for me than that of most other UNIX books. For one, it has a detailed Table of Contents that I find useful. I would suggest that you peruse this book, first to see if this format is more useful to you, as well. Abrahams, Paul W., and Larson, Bruce R., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992. UNIX for VMS Programmers This is absolutely the best UNIX book that I own. It is a no-brainer for me to find the UNIX commands I need using this book. The catch to this, of course, is that I started my professional life working on the VMS operating system. For anyone else who came from VMS and needs to understand UNIX, this is THE book. Bourne, Philip E., Digital Press, 1990. Oracle SQL*Plus This is a pocket-sized book on Oracle’s SQL*Plus. It easily fits into my laptop case, as it is around 7” x 4.25” and around 0.25” thick. When a similar reference comes out for SQL Server, I hope someone will let me know. Gennick, Jonathan, O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2000. Project Management The Deadline This book is useful for the first-time project manager. It is told as a fictional story. Depending on your point of view, it is either corny or charming, but it outlines the basic tenets of project management in a way that makes some of the concepts more easily understandable to those who have little or no experience, although those with some experience might benefit from reading about areas in which they think they are weak. DeMarco, Tom, Dorset House Publishing, 1997. Management Knights of the Tele-Round Table This book illustrates the problems of managing remote teams. It puts the central character into a book-long conversation with King Arthur. As corny as this sounds, this is a terrific book. Having worked on remote teams, myself, I recognized many of the situations detailed within this book. Those who are inexperienced with this situation will scoff at some of the problems listed, but most of these problems are fairly common in these situations. Kostener, Jaclyn, PhD., Warner Books, 1994. Understanding the Professional Programmer Do you manage programmers? If you manage a large LIMS project, you probably answered, “Yes,” to that question. Do they befuddle you? If you answered, “Yes,” to that, too, then this is the book for you. This book discusses how programmers’ minds tend to work, but it also discusses the issue of how programmers can be more professional. This is a book for both you and your programmers to read together. Weinberg, Gerald M., Dorset House Publishing, 1988. Peopleware Although the Dilbert cartoons illustrate the silly things that we do to our project teams, this book does the same, but with a focus on pointing out what we could change to make them happier and more productive. DeMarco, Tom, and Lister, Timothy, Dorset House Publishing, 1987. Managing Technical Professionals: Crossing the Swamp This book attempts to dispel the myth that the management of one type of worker is like that of any other. It asserts that managing technical professionals is unique and details why this is so. Stein, Richard J., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993. Buying Information Technology The Smart Way to Buy Information Technology This book outlines the entire process of buying information technology in a way that finally made sense to me. I especially liked part 1 on “Why Information Technology Buying Mistakes Happen” and part 3 on “Contracting.” My favorite part of the entire book was the concept of “Quiet Enjoyment” (pp. 167, 206) for contracts, which indicates that if you are following the rules of the contract, the vendor can’t come and “disrupt your operations.” (p. 206) Peterson, Brad L., and Carco, Diane M., Amacom – American Management Association, 1998. Other The PeopleWare Papers: Notes on the Human Side of Software Software is not just about computers, but about the people that create it. This book is a collection of the author’s articles on the subject. What is especially handy about this book is that it is easy to skip-around and to read the sections you are most interested in without getting too out-of-context, although there are a few of these articles that refer back to each other. Not only will you find things you already know, such as the idea that software professionals are “better at criticizing than being criticized” (p. 53), but many gems that you probably have not thought of before, as well. Constantine, Larry, L., Prentice Hall, 2001. The Invisible Computer This is a book devoted to illustrating why our computer applications are so difficult for our end-users to employ. If you have recently had one of your users roll their eyes at you when you told them something was “easy” as it only required hitting Cntl/Alt/Enter while standing on their head in the moonlight, you might want to consider reading this. This is more of a “big picture” book, but referring to it helps me to remember that what our users need is not more technology, but more usable applications. Norman, Donald A., The MIT Press, 1998. Places to Find Books I still prefer to purchase books at a bookstore so that I can look through the book section and read the dustcovers, first. For the East Coasters, Quantum Books (www.quantumbooks.com) in Cambridge, MA has a wide variety of technically-oriented books, which includes books on topics such as the management of technology, for example. On the West Coast, those in Portland, OR can visit the massive Powell’s (www.powells.com), which has a large section of technical books to peruse. Of course, you can always look at Amazon (www.amazon.com), as well. If you are looking to find books on the “soft” skills, such as management skills or people skills, take a look at the American Management Association (www.amanet.org) publications. For other personal and professional development books, you might take a look at National Seminars (www.natsem.com) or SkillPath Seminars (www.skillpath.com) who sell books on their topics, as well as their seminars. |
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