Tag: reading

Book: Henrik Kniberg & Mattias Skarin “Kanban and Scrum — Making the Most of Both”

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Since the beginning of the 21st century, the software development industry has undergone a tremendous number of changes. Nowadays, if you aren’t familiar with Agile methodologies and words like Kanban and Scrum leave you puzzled, chances are you might hear, “Out of the profession!”

Many people now see Agile methodologies as some kind of panacea for all problems. It’s like, “Back in the day, everyone worked with Waterfall, so things were slow, expensive, and unpredictable.” And if you suddenly switch to modern agile methodologies, happiness will immediately follow. But there is no cure-all, and any methodology requires proper application. In my experience, I haven’t seen a single company that fully applies all aspects of agile methodologies, and that’s generally fine. Agile is more about approaches and practices that each team should try, experiment with, and find what works best for them. Of course, there are certain principles that need to be followed.

I also know several companies (fairly large ones) that became disillusioned with Agile after trying the wrong approach or implementing it incorrectly. Personally, I’m not an avid fan of every methodology, but I’ve worked extensively with Agile, tried different approaches with teams, and continuously read about implementation practices—regardless of the old saying, it’s better to learn from others’ experience.

And I must say, there aren’t that many good books on the subject. Many authors provide rather superficial descriptions of techniques, while some are more focused on selling themselves as trainers than on helping companies understand what to do and how to do it. I can say that even some official certifications from the Agile community provide very superficial knowledge, and people then flaunt an official certificate without any real experience or, at times, even a basic understanding of how to work with the methodology.

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Book: Dmitry Glukhovsky “Metro 2035”

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In September, I wrote in this blog about the game Metro: Exodus—the latest part in the trilogy about Artyom. I also briefly covered the original source material, Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro series. The first game followed the plot of the first book quite closely, but after that, the games and books began to diverge, though they clearly influenced each other, especially since Dmitry Glukhovsky was heavily involved in the development of the games.

I really liked the first book in the series back in the day, despite some critiques of its writing style. However, it was easy to forgive the author because the concept was so intriguing. The plot itself wasn’t new: yet another “messiah” traveling from point A to point B to bring happiness to everyone. But the setting of a post-apocalyptic world, where only a few survivors now have to live underground—this was captivating. Glukhovsky added mysticism and science fiction elements, and, unexpectedly, the book became a hit, turning Dmitry Glukhovsky into a mega-star. His books have been translated into numerous languages, Metro inspired a highly successful video game, and his relatively new novel Text was adapted into a film in Russia featuring top Russian actors. But I covered all of this in my last post, so I won’t repeat myself.

After the first book, I quickly read the second, but it featured different characters and lacked both the originality and emotional impact of the first. However, when Glukhovsky released the third book in the series in 2015, I bought it immediately and started reading right away. I managed to get through at most 100 pages before putting it down in frustration and even wrote a brief, emotional post on Facebook. I simply couldn’t keep reading—I disliked the book that much.

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Book: Boris Akunin “Peace and War”

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Boris Akunin’s fictional supplement to his series on the history of the Russian Empire runs in parallel, telling the story of one family. Like the History series itself, the narrative is quite uneven. As a standalone series, I find it relatively weak, if it weren’t meant as a supplement. However, I love both history and Akunin as a storyteller.

The series began with short novellas about specific historical periods, but with the latest volumes, each period is accompanied by a full novel. The previous book, The Fortunate Adventures and Reflections of Lucius Catin, portrayed not so much Russia itself but rather the European trends that influenced Russia in various ways. Though I didn’t rate it highly, it still had some interesting moments.

The new novel, Mir i Voyna (Peace and War), shows us Lucius’s family many years later. Even with its title, the author seems to be saying, “Now I’ll show you Tolstoy, but from a different angle.” I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of Count Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but at least Tolstoy’s novel has grandeur, epic scope. In contrast, Akunin’s story is limited to a few months and a single village with serfs near Moscow.

But here, Akunin at least tried to play with the detective genre, one of his favorites. However, it falls far short of his best Fandorin novels. It even seems that the detective storyline doesn’t really interest the author and was added to the book simply as a framework.

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Book: Maxim Dorofeev “The Jedi Way”

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Three years ago, also in November, I wrote a review of Maxim Dorofeev’s book Jedi Techniques. In it, Maxim aimed to consolidate the essence of his time-management training. The book was very good, although it didn’t reinvent the wheel. Now, Maxim has released its follow-up, The Jedi Way.

However, calling it a sequel isn’t quite accurate. The new book is more a reflection on his earlier advice and a re-evaluation of his own methods. In this way, I actually liked it even more than the first.

As I mentioned, in the first book, Maxim compiled what he considered the best elements from numerous methods. He amusingly illustrated these concepts through the characters of a rational little person and a monkey, supposedly living in our heads and competing for our attention and time. These characters were borrowed from Tim Urban, and they fit seamlessly into the narrative.

However, these were largely well-known techniques and tips from other methods. Maxim simply brought them together and presented them in an appealing way.

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Book: Viktor E. Frankl “Man’s Search For Meaning”

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I continue reading books about the experience (though calling it “life” is impossible) in Nazi death camps. This time, I’ve taken up a short but well-known book by world-renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl. When he was sent to a concentration camp, he tried to hide the manuscript of his book, but he couldn’t save it. So, he began gathering insights and “writing” the book in his mind and secretly on scraps of paper, as a way to hold onto sanity amidst the horrors of the camp and to find something to cling to—something to survive for.

When he was finally liberated, he quickly recorded all he had reflected on during those horrific years in the form of a book, which he initially didn’t even want to publish under his real name, though he was eventually persuaded otherwise. In 1946, the book was published as Man’s Search for Meaning.

Although Viktor Frankl lived many more years, passing away in 1997 at the age of 92, this book is considered one of his greatest works.

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Book: Boris Akunin “Just Masa”

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The Winter Queen, the first novel by Boris Akunin about Erast Fandorin, was released in 1998 and almost immediately caused a sensation in literary circles. I usually approached widely popular books with caution, so I didn’t start reading the series about the remarkable detective until Boris Akunin had already written seven or eight books. But once I devoured the first one, I eagerly moved on to the next. And so it went until I had read them all in succession.

After that, I consistently bought each new book in the series as soon as it was released, read it right away, and waited for the next one. However, after the tenth book, The Diamond Chariot, I felt that the best days were behind. The books were still good, but they no longer sparked the same excitement as the earlier ones. The final novel, Not Saying Goodbye, where Erast Petrovich finally leaves, brought more sadness and melancholy than anything else. After fifteen novels, his story came to an end, but I still longed to revisit it, hopefully at the level of the best books.

Then, in 2020, Boris Akunin unexpectedly released the novel Just Masa. No, it’s not about Erast Petrovich, but rather about his loyal servant and companion—the Japanese Masahiro Shibata. Masa first appears in the fourth novel in the series, The Death of Achilles. As I recall, Akunin describes the first meeting between Erast Fandorin and the young yakuza from Yokohama in the tenth novel, The Diamond Chariot, where much of the story focuses on the young detective’s life in Japan.

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Book: Alexander Feduta “Lukashenko: A Political Biography”

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On August 9, 2020, my home country, the Republic of Belarus, held another presidential election, in which, according to the official results, the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, once again won by a large margin. On that very day, I began reading Lukashenko: A Political Biography, written by Alexander Feduta, a former ally of the president who worked in his first campaign headquarters and in his first government. When he wrote the book, Lukashenko had already been in power for 10 years, and even then, the author noted many changes in the initial promises and direction chosen by the country’s first and, so far, only president.

Today, Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years. Many of today’s voters were born during his rule, attended kindergarten, went to school, grew up, and became parents themselves. And for the second month after the election, protests in Belarus have not subsided, as the authorities attempt to brutally suppress them.

Why did I start reading this book? In 1994, I was 17 years old, not yet eligible to vote, and probably not very interested in politics at the time. But my coming of age took place “in the Lukashenko era.” I wanted to understand how Alexander Grigoryevich came to power and what kind of person he was. I remember all the events described in the book, but I could hardly assess them back then in the way a person “over forty” can now.

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Book: “Dealing with Difficult People”

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Sometimes, I read individual articles from Harvard Business Review and even posted one on my blog (Misconceptions about Feedback). They also publish books that compile several articles on specific topics, organized into sub-series.

I decided to read one from the Emotional Intelligence series, titled Dealing with Difficult People, as this topic has interested me for several years. The book includes eight articles by seven authors. It’s not very thick (around 150 pages), and with a more modest font size, it would be even slimmer.

As the title and description suggest, the main theme of the book is dealing with difficult people, those under stress, and troublesome colleagues.

On one hand, it’s a collection of very short articles, and I wouldn’t say each one is revolutionary or highly valuable. On the other hand, it’s brief and to the point, unlike many business writers who often stretch a single idea over 300 pages.

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Game: Metro Exodus

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metro_exodus

Though belated, I want to share my thoughts on the third part of the Metro game universe—Metro Exodus. But first, let’s dive into a historical overview of its origins and the earlier games.

The Metro series, developed by the Kyiv-based company 4A Games, is based on the works of Dmitry Glukhovsky. Glukhovsky wrote the first novel, Metro 2033, back in 2002, but it was not quite the novel we know today. It originally had only 13 chapters, and Glukhovsky published it online for free. Unexpectedly, the novel gained popularity, but readers didn’t like everything about it. So, in 2005, Dmitry made significant revisions to the book, expanding it to 20 chapters and altering the main character’s fate (in the original version, he dies). It was in this revised form that the novel first appeared in print.

The story is set in the year 2033, 20 years after a nuclear war that left few survivors, and Moscow itself became an almost uninhabitable place. To make matters worse, various mutants emerged, eager to finish off the last remaining humans. Only those who were lucky enough to be in the Moscow metro system during the attack managed to survive. The metro became their new home, eventually dividing into micro-states with their own authorities, rules, and even ideologies. The entire book is essentially a quest in which the main character, Artyom, must travel from one point in the metro to another. Along the way, he encounters various stations and faces both human adversaries and mutants, as well as supernatural elements.

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Book: Susan Cain “Quiet”

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I remember, during my childhood, there was a period when I became very interested in various tests, even collecting them in a separate notebook. It all started with Eysenck’s temperament test, where people were categorized as choleric, sanguine, melancholic, or phlegmatic. But Eysenck had another test, which, by the way, overlapped significantly with his temperament test—the introversion-extroversion test.

Who are introverts and extroverts? There are actually a huge number of scientific interpretations, and they sometimes differ in the details. But I’ll try to explain in simple terms.

Introverts are generally rather reserved people; they tend to focus on their inner world. They are usually not very sociable, feel uncomfortable in public or in large groups, and would prefer an evening with a book to a party.

Extroverts are the opposite of introverts 😉 They enjoy being in the spotlight, often becoming the life of the party, have a large number of friends and acquaintances, and are very sociable.

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