To cut the chase of the bad and the ugly of Software Engineering books, here’s a very, very useful knol written by Jurgen Appelo, that list 100 best Software Engineering books.

To highlight from the 100-Software-Engineering-books list, here’s the Top 10 from the list:

1. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (2nd edition), by Steve McConnell.
2. Head First Design Patterns, by Elisabeth Freeman, etc.
3. Rapid Development, by Steve McConnell.
4. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series), by Erich Gamma.
5. Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C (2nd Edition), by Bruce Schneier.
6. Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices (Alan Apt Series), by Robert C. Martin.
7. Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, by Joel Spolsky.
8. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition), by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister.
9. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition), by Frederick P. Brooks.
10. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series), by Martin Fowler.

To read the full list of Top 100 Software Engineering books, including how Juergen determine the books’ position in the Top 100 List, please visit Jurgen’s knol.

According to a knol by Jim Schiel of Danube Technologies, Inc., Scrum is a powerful project management tool that improves team collaboration, productiveness and product quality through a clear definition of roles and responsibilities.

Project development involves collaboration of team members, and this add the complexity of the project. A software or system is needed to ‘moderate’ collaboration with one main aim: achieve more result with less. Scrum is one of the system offering a plausible solution.

Jim explained that scrum is a value system that asks teams to work together to accomplish a common goal, with emphasise on team over individual output.

The benefit of scrum is that it provides structure without unnecessary bureaucracy, and promote effective communication between team members. Those will eventually lead to better employee retention and satisfaction, as well as producing better work results for less money in less time.

If you think Scrum might be the one for your business, consider visiting Jim’s knol on Scrum that explain about Scrum in detail.

Image by Jacob Botter.