I co-authored a chapter in "Beautiful Teams" at the urging of a friend, who was coordinating the project.
Writing a chapter is quite a bit of work, so a book must be quite an undertaking. I feel that it's worth doing, though. Writing anything -- a design spec, an email, a story from your past, etc -- forces you to coalesce and clarify thoughts that have floating around your brain. I gained new perspective on events that I thought I had a complete handle on years earlier.
With NUMMI closing down any day now, "The Machine that Changed the World" by Womack, et al (1990) is almost as relevant now as it was then. The book describes the management and product development techniques used in the Japanese-owned auto industry and how they contrast(ed) with those employed by US-owned auto companies. Many of the ideas have been employed in healthcare and software development in the intervening two decades.
I can't speak to the relevance of any specific work of fiction to any HN'er but the one writing this comment, but "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald are two novels that stand out to me as being particularly good.
I'd recommend "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore. It almost perfectly describes the lifecycle and challenges faced by the two software-product-based startups that I've worked for.
Agreed, and SharePoint tends to be backed up on the DBMS backup schedule, which is usually more frequent than the file-share/NAS schedule, which is another bonus.
It's the "non-sanctioned" aspect that tends to cause issues down the line, not moving to SharePoint from MS Access. I could've been more clear in that section of my comment.
Based on the implementation at my workplace, SP seems to have value as a hybrid intranet site and file share. Each department has their own section in which non-IT folks can create simple HTML content and can attach documents. It is also relatively simple to share this content with other groups as needed, based on membership in Active Directory groups.
More controversially, SP also seems to be replacing MS Access as the non-IT-sanctioned application platform of choice. Instead of creating Access databases on a file share, people use SP "lists" to store data. The controversy stems from the fact that these lists often outgrow the practical limits of SP and need to be migrated to "real" systems.
Many people also seem to want to use SP as a Content Management System or even as the preferred application development platform (in which all application functionality is delivered as SP "web parts", which plug in to SP pages). These uses seem to cause as many problems as they solve, but that's just my opinion.
"Make: Electronics -- Learning Through Discovery" By Charles Platt; Released: December 2009 (est.) ; http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596153755
"With this practical introductory guide, you'll learn important concepts while you work on real projects."
Writing a chapter is quite a bit of work, so a book must be quite an undertaking. I feel that it's worth doing, though. Writing anything -- a design spec, an email, a story from your past, etc -- forces you to coalesce and clarify thoughts that have floating around your brain. I gained new perspective on events that I thought I had a complete handle on years earlier.
BT: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518028