HN Books @HNBooksMonth

This whole thing goes back to the accounting process of measuring "throughput" rather than some fixed number such as inventory.

This book "The Goal" was incredibly beneficial for me in understanding the concept of throughput. While the book is a parable focused on manufacturing, it can be easily applied to companies in tech. https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

⬐ cjalmeida

Eli Goldratt is an unsung hero of modern management practice. Though the Goal is his most famous work, his other books are pretty useful.

And like this throughput accounting thing, his ideas can be quite heretic in some circles.

⬐ Jtsummers

That book is next on my reading list, but also worth checking out is "The Phoenix Project". It applies the concepts of "The Goal" to IT (operations to start, but it gets extended to development through the book).

https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

⬐ konpikwastaken

Was just going to recommend reading this book, glad someone did already. Being in tech/IT, you will be able to identify each of the characters in your work environment at one point or another.

⬐ Jtsummers

One of the best things about reading these books, IMO, is that I finally have the vocabulary to speak to management. Before I'd say the exact same thing, but I didn't know they had a term for what I wanted (value stream maps, for instance) and we couldn't communicate. Now that I can speak in management terms, they're listening to my inputs because we understand each other.

There’s a classic book called The Goal[1] which is an outstanding example of teaching using the Socratic method. The basic lessons of the book can also change the way you think about business in general and software engineering in particular, as a bonus. One important concept for example is to liken unreleased software to a big pile of inventory in a warehouse: the inventory doesn’t do the company any good until it is paid for by a customer. Similarly, software doesn’t do any good until it is providing value in production.

Although it is a business book, The entire book is written as a novel. The author talks in the intro about how showing the Socratic method in practice is one of his key goals.

It’s also excellent on Audible. The follow-up book, The Critical Chain, is about project management and is also life-changing with its awesome concepts.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

⬐ nikofeyn

i just learned about the goal a few days ago. there's also a graphic novel version of the book: the goal: a business graphic novel

https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Business-Graphic-Novel/dp/088427...

⬐ BraveNewCurency

There is also an IT version called The Phoenix Project. Same story, but in a computer biz.

⬐ gnat

The Goal also inspired my favourite tech business book, The Phoenix Project[1]. As in The Goal, the protagonist has a mentor who asks pointed questions that are the slow-burning fuse which later unlock understanding. Easy to read, wise, and useful at work. I've caused at least ten people around me to read it, and they've all been grateful.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

When I got my first managerial role in a software organization, my boss told me to read The Goal. I was really turned off by the fake family narrative aspect. I skimmed it, trying to pick out the practical business parts. I was already aware of Agile and continuous improvement / Kaizen, and physical manufacturing had nothing to do with my job, so "Theory of Constraints" didn't speak to me much.

Also, the cover just reeks of business-book BS (http://www.amazon.com/*/dp/0884270610)

When I finished the book, my boss asked me what I thought. I told him I didn't like it, and he laughed and told me it was awful. I shut my mouth instead of asking me why he recommended the book in the first place.

That was my first introduction to management BS.

For OR, and manufacturing in general, and when the book was written in the early 1990s when these ideas were newer and we didn't have the Internet for disseminating information, The Goal and TOC were probably more valuable to the contemporary audience.

⬐ kevinrutherford

I agree that The Goal isn't the greatest literary novel in history; but then it doesn't set out to be that.

For me, the genius of ToC is that it provides a focussed, step-by-step way to get to the big productivity improvements; whereas lean/kaizen, while also very effective, can take an age to get to the same place.

⬐ ojbyrne

Minor nitpick - The Goal was first published in 1984.

⬐ misterbee

Ah. That's what I thought, and I originally wrote "early 1980s" (which made my reference to the Internet more sensible), but then I changed it based on the "1992" date shown on the Amazon page (for the 2/ed, or something like this.)

⬐ nhebb

I was working in manufacturing at the time I read The Goal, and I didn't get what was so special about it either. Having done JIT, time studies / line balancing, PERT/CPM, and other tools in the industrial engineering trade, I didn't think there was anything revolutionary about it. Maybe for those operating at an abstract level of operations management it was novel, but for those of us in the boots-on-the-ground mode, it was largely a rehash of existing ideas.

Here's a couple that I've enjoyed lately. Only "The Deal" and "21 Dog Years" are tech centered, but all of them are good reads and amusing. Descriptions are pulled from Amazon. I've included affiliate codes, but feel free to strip them.

"Then We Came To The End" by Joshua Ferris

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031601639X?ie=UTF8&tag=...

It's 2001. The dot-com bubble has burst and rolling layoffs have hit an unnamed Chicago advertising firm sending employees into an escalating siege mentality as their numbers dwindle.

"Company" by Max Berry

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400079373?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Barry once again satirizes corporate America. This time, he takes aim at the perennial corporate crime of turning people into cogs in a machine. Recent b-school grad Stephen Jones, a fresh-faced new hire at a Seattle-based holding company called Zephyr, jumps on the fast track to success when he's immediately promoted from sales assistant to sales rep in Zephyr's training sales department. "Don't try to understand the company. Just go with it," a colleague advises when Jones is flummoxed to learn his team sells training packages to other internal Zephyr departments. But unlike his co-workers, he won't accept ignorance of his employer's business, and his unusual display of initiative catapults him into the ranks of senior management, where he discovers the "customer-free" company's true, sinister raison d'être.

"The Deal" by Joe Hutsko

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438235844?ie=UTF8&tag=...

Hutsko debuts with an effort to re-create the near-demise of Apple Computer with a thinly disguised cast of fictional alter egos. Hutsko, who worked closely with Apple CEO John Sculley, casts Peter Jones in the role of Apple founder Steve Jobs. As the novel opens, Jones is unseated from his position by his best friend, Matthew Locke, a buttoned-down Sculley type who engineers a power-play and steals control of Jones's innovative computer company, Via Technology.

"The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0884270610?ie=UTF8&tag=...

In this intriguing, readable business novel, which illustrates state-of-the-art economic theory, Alex Rogo is a UniCo plant manager whose factory and marriage are failing. To revitalize the plant, he follows piecemeal advice from an elusive former college professor who teaches, for example, that reduction in the efficiency of some plant operations may make the entire operation more productive. Alex's attempts to find the path to profitability and to engage his employeesi n the struggle involve the reader; and thankfully the authors' economic models, including a game with match sticks and bowls, are easy to understand. Although some characters are as anonymous as the goods manufactured in the factory, others ring true. In addition, the tender story of Alex and his wife's separation and reconciliation makes a touching contrast to the rest of the book. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the state of the American economy.

"21 Dog Years : A Cube Dweller's Tale" by Mike Daisey

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074323815X?ie=UTF8&tag=...

In 1998, Daisey gave up his life of frequenting cafes, temping and participating in small-time theater to join an up-and-coming bookseller called Amazon.com. Here, he offers a kind of workplace coming-of-age memoir the young hero comes to terms with his ambition, synthesizes it with his liberal arts education and finally spits it out. All the dot-com punching bags are here: the lampooning of new economy jargon, the girlfriend worrying about her boyfriend's sudden obsession with the company picnic, and jokes about Pets.com. What saves the book from being an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel is Daisey's sharp eye: he renders even banal corporate moments with energy and wit.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is pretty good. It is a business fiction book, so although it is not about startups, it applies well to start ups. http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/08...

The book explains Theory of Constraints(TOC) in a novel. TOC is basically similar to profiling software, but instead of software, you profile a business. Find the bottlenecks in the system and work on them. Improving other things has very low return, and usually just waste of time. Improving bottlenecks improves the throughput of the whole system.

Here are my other recommended business fiction books: http://atank.interlogy.com/blog/?p=15

Free 10-day Buddhist meditation retreats, incl. room & board, at one of the many Vipassana Meditation Centers world-wide (http://www.dhamma.org). Very old-school; the real deal.

The Goal, by Eliyahu Goldratt (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0884270610). Most real-world systems have a single constraint that limit the system's ability to achieve goal units. The best way to improve the system is to (0) define the system's owners and their goal for the system, (1) identify the constraint (2) improve the situation at the constraint in a way that does not require significant investment; (3) if the improvement resulting from the previous is not sufficient, decide how to improve the constraint in a way that does require significant investment; (4) subordinate everything else in the system to the decision arrived at in the previous step; (5) start over at step 1.

The Game, by Neil Strauss (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060554738)

⬐ doubleplus

Thanks a bunch for that dhamma.org link. I was just bitching the other day about how charging $200 for weekend retreats keeps Buddhism on the fringes here.

⬐ inovica

dhamma.org looks great. Just got to find the time to do one of these 10-day courses. They look intense from what I've been reading, but I think I'd really benefit. Did you do one of them?

⬐ bumbledraven

They intense and worthwhile. I did my first one back in high school.

http://novemberfive.blogspot.com/2007/11/ten-days-story-of-m...

⬐ duke

dhamma.org is also interesting from business model point of view.. the system will not accept pay from newbies; you can only pay after you pay your dues (sit down and shut up for 10 days straight).. you might think b) people would game the system for free room/board or a) this can't scale.. but the facts prove otherwise:

from a little center started in lates 60's, in india, now there are hundreds of centers around the world.. when i got to mexico in late 2005, there was one center, now there are three.. the system is growing.. people tend to pay after they get the goods, because it feels good and right..