Title, author, and précis
External Design
Construction
Checking
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Testing Foundations
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Understanding the Rating System
Three columns help you decide if a work is relevant:
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External Design |
Construction |
Checking |
|
Works that cover external design describe what the customer should see and be able to do. Books on marketing, user interface design, and technical writing all fall into this category.
Works about construction discuss how the product is built: architectural design, coding techniques, and the like. Infrastructure issues like configuration management also fall into this category.
Along with building comes checking, the process of determining whether whatever was done was done right. Checking includes both testing and reviewing techniques.
Since these categories are broad, I give a few words of summary in the first column:
Title, author, and précis |
External Design |
Construction |
Checking |
|
| Writing Solid Code, a book by Steve Maguire (letting fewer bugs pass out of development) |
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Here are the rating symbols used in the three columns:
(blank) |
The work does not address this category. Note: works that don't fall into any of these three categories will have all columns blank. You'll have to look at the review to check relevance to your job. |
|
The work addresses a topic in this category and it serves its audience extremely well. You'll have to read the review for details about the target audience. If you're in it, you should read this work. |
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The work does a good job of addressing a topic in the category, but there are omissions or significant problems. Still worth reading. |
|
Sketchily addresses a topic in the category. In most cases, for completists only. In some cases, no other work covers the same ground, or the work has other virtues. Check the review if the first column's summary interests you. |
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The book addresses this category, but peripherally (as "icing on the cake"). |
The final column addresses an important issue: a work that's relevant but hard to read may go unread. A checkmark in the Good Read column means that the book is entertaining. "Entertaining" is defined as "readable enough to keep Brian Marick awake on the early morning flight from San Jose to Chicago".
Title, author, and précis |
External Design |
Construction |
Checking |
A Good Read? |
| Writing Solid Code, a book by Steve Maguire (letting fewer bugs pass out of development) |
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