Library

The stock-and-flow language finally gave me a way to explain why adding engineers made a delivery slower. Chapter on leverage points is the one that matters.

Fifty years old and still the clearest statement of why communication cost eats team growth. Skim the technology chapters, read the ones on scheduling.

Appetite instead of estimate is the idea I stole and kept. The six-week cycle religion I left behind.

Positioning as a deliberate choice of competitive alternative. Worth it for the exercise alone; the rest is padding.

Changed how I write error messages more than any engineering book. Affordances and signifiers are the vocabulary I use in reviews.

The chapter on meetings as a medium of managerial work rearranged my calendar permanently.

Useful for naming what goes wrong in estimation. Long, and the later chapters do not repay the effort.

“I intend to” as a default phrasing for handing down decisions. I use it weekly; the rest is a memoir.