You may remember the last contest. Here is another.
I was in contact with a few more publishers towards the beginning of this month and a few books to giveaway caught my eye. One of those was a new book by Jurgen Appelo titled “Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders“.
And something about Martie the Management Model which could be plant, animal, or neither.
I’ll admit it. Jurgen has a better contest going on himself, with signed copies. I kind of want one of those signed copies myself…. (insert mischievous finger-twiddling here) You should not enter that contest too so I have you have more chances of winning.
That’s OK. I’m picking Jurgen’s book anyway because I want it to do well, and perhaps this little contest will help a bit. If I don’t win a copy of this book I’ll cry like a baby go get one anyway, this is one of those books you don’t want to miss out on. I’ve always liked Jurgen’s style of writing, rather candid and honest (as I hope mine comes across too). Except he’s funny too. Damn it, he’s better than me.
Speaking of that, here’s the contest and rules.
Jurgen’s Best Post
1) Go to Jurgen’s blog archive page: http://www.noop.nl/archive.html
2) Leave a comment here at http://pmStudent.com/book-giveaway-jurgen telling me which of Jurgen’s posts is your favorite, and why. Be sure to copy/paste the direct link to eliminate confusion, I’m confused enough as it is. Also, tell me what the heck Martie is supposed to be.
3) I will be the judge, jury, and executioner and decide who did the best job of picking a post and describing why it was their favorite. Extra points for humor, savvy, and sheer awesomeness.
This contest ends midnight February 4th, 2011, the same day as the official book launch. I’ll take a look at the comments then and see who wowed me.
Kudos on the book Jurgen, I look forward to reading it.
I’ll throw this out there even though I haven’t read the book and I am sure Jurgen already has explanations for my objections. But referring to Martie the Management Thing:
1) All it has are eyes. Where are the parts that do something other than observe?
2) Slogans are not strategy. Who wouldn’t want to “improve everything?” “Empower teams?” “Develop competence?” Where are the parts that tell me how to improve everything while empowering teams when I have a limited budget and a project customer constantly breathing down my neck?
Sorry if I am overcritical but I have heard development teams use agile methods as their silver bullet when they have just come off a major project failure and they are trying to convince the stakeholders to give them another chance. A great team can use any project management method and still deliver while a mediocre team can have the best agile method out there and still fail to deliver.