Sooner or later, every developer out there gets sick of the long hours, the process, the verification and the deadlines. Even if we’ve naturally gravitated towards leadership, the clarion call of management is strong- it’s perceived as advancement (potentially into a C* role), comes with the benefit of fewer long hours, you have people you can boss around… all in all good things when looked at in the right light. Yet most developers end up in Development Management, which ends up being more about estimates and balancing resources (aka beancounting), rather than Product Management, which continues apace with the thing I love most about being a Developer: Building Stuff.

Unfortunately, the field is incredibly hard to break in to (Especially in software), and books on methods and methodologies are few and far between. So when my User Groups’ book shipment from O’Reilly came in with a complementary copy of Adaptive Path’s “Subject to Change” I was intrigued. From the title, the book is about “Creating great products and services for an uncertain world”. Think I was interested? You bet! Here was a book that seemed to be all about how to create and manage a product in the everchanging world of the internet! Unfortunately this particular edition was earmarked for a colleague of mine, however it took me precisely 30 minutes to track down a copy in a nearby Borders and start reading it that night.

You should note that I rarely, if ever, read professional books, that’s what blogs are there for. But I digress…

It turns out that my initial enthusiasm was a little naive, since the argument presented in the book was substantially different than what I was expecting. In fact, one of its chapters is titled ‘Stop Designing “Products”‘, which made me more than a little concerned. Yet having said that, and taking into account the often blatant plugs for Adaptive Path, it turns out the book was exactly what I needed, even though it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I went to see the King’s Singers at the Byham last night. To everyone who also went (and whom I didn’t see there), I hope you had as amazing a time as I did. To everyone who didn’t… good lord, you really missed out.

Now many of you may not know that I used to be a member of an A Cappella group called The Originals. I also spent 4 years in the Repertory Chorus and Concert Choir, and took a year of voice lessons. At one point in time, operatic or jazz vocals were a serious career option for me, one that I never ended up pursuing largely because… well, if you think architecture doesn’t pay well, voice pays even less. Of course, with American Idol I could have maybe had a big break, but hindsight isn’t helping me much now, except to add some wishful thinking.