Book Review ‘Capability Cases’

Capability Cases: A Solution Envisioning Approach
Irene Polikoff, Robeert Coyne, Ralph Hodgson

Introduces the concep t of ‘Capability Cases’ – a concept made up one or more functions that collectively provide a business value.

 

 

 

Titles referenced in the book:

Title	Author	Remarks
Towards an Architecture Handbook	Bruce Anderson
The Timeless Way of Building	Christopher Alexander
Real Options:Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World	Martha Amram and Nalin Kalatilaka
Creativity – The Magic Synthesis	Silvano Arieti
Information Systems Development	D. E. Avison and G. Fitzgerald
Learnings and Inquiry Based Reuse Adoption	S. Bailing, M. Simos, L. Levine, and R. Creps
Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures	Douglas K Barry
Extreme Programming Explained	Kent Beck
Designing Hard Software – The Essential Tasks	Dougla Bennett
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: An Integrated Approach	Val Belton and Theodoer J. Stewart
Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration	Stephen Berczuk, Brad Appleton
The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms	Margaret A. Boden
The Mythical Man-Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering	Frederick P. Bookrs
The Social Life of Information	John Seely Brown and Paul Duguild
Web Services, E-Business, and the Semantics Web	C. Bussler, R. Hull, S.A. McIlraith, M.E.Orlowska, B. Pernici, and J. Yang
The Mind Map Book	Tony Buzan
Scenario-Based Design	J.M. Carroll
Enterprise Service Bus	David A. Chappell
To be continued…

Product Development for the Lean Enterprise

Book Review of Michael N. Kennedy’s ‘Product Development for the Lean Enterprise: Why Toyota’s system is four times more productive and how you can implement it.’

A book that presents a ‘lean’ approach to product development. The word Toyota appears in the book, but it’s not clear whether the book claims that what it discusses is the method used by Toyota.  Kennedy’s background included 30 years at Texas Instruments. No mention of Toyota, so he apparently does not have any insider experience.

 

Using a short novel approach popularised (to my knowledge) by Eliyahu Goldratt, the book reveals one by one the various aspects of the principles involved in lean product development.

 

It’s not easy to write an engaging story. Goldratt pulled it off in his hard-to-put-down ‘The Goal’ but then did not quite achieve the same impact with his other books, notably ‘Critical Chain’. 

 

Unfortunately I didn’t find Kennedy’s storytelling to be interesting, which makes going through the book a little challenging.  Both the narrator and the characters speak in an unnatural manner, and wouldn’t be out of place in ‘The Brady Bunch’.   The characters were pretty much cardboard characters, indistinguishable from each other.  Add to that, the ratio of story-telling words to the actual ‘meat’ of the discussion is pretty high.

 

I haven’t finished reading it, but will continue and will update this review.

The World's (Mis)Leading Expert

Experts are often introduced as ‘the world’s leading expert on …’. Given that experts are often wrong, some of them should be introduced as ‘the world’s misleading expert…’