Donald C. Gause

You can't tell right away, but almost immediately you know this book is dated. Ignoring the amusing clip art, the fact that the author has to spell out "electronic mail" is a big clue.

Nevertheless, there is some use to this, but much of it is elementary. The advantage to the book is that it helps you check yourself and your team for bad patterns. Much of the content is stuff you probably assume you are doing right, but that it does not hurt to check.

Skip to the "generating ideas" section, show more however, if you want a good laugh - there may be a suggestion involving silly hats. *sigh* show less

It's written in an amusing and easy-to-read way, but it meanders quite a bit from a central point/theme.

It hits lots of really interesting points/ideas/witticisms, and leaves you going "hmm" a few times, but it doesn't really give you, say, a systemic approach to problem-solving or problem-diagnosing. It has a few interesting guidelines, but I'd re-title it something like "Musings on problem solving and some lateral thinking stories".

A helpful high-level look at the problems in problem-solving. Written in a wry style that was a little jarring to get used to but flowed very well.

As a programmer, what I was hoping to get out of this book were some insights into the most essential idea within my profession - that of problem solving. Theoretically, problem solving is indeed the subject of this book, however I feel like the presentation of subject matter suffers greatly due to the style of the book.

There are indeed many useful "nuggets" of information and wisdoms presented throughout that are rather insightful, however what fails in my opinion are the stories that lead show more from one idea to another and are meant to hold it all together. My guess is that the intention of the authors was to use the comical context of these stories to make the ideas less "dry", however I just couldn't relate to the stories and felt like they distracted from the actual useful material within the book.

Perhaps I am just not part of the intended audience of this book - the intention could be that the text is mainly applicable within the project management context. However as a programmer I am also interested in the general process of problem definition and solution within projects and interactions with clients; unfortunately I felt like I could not get much out of the book no matter what perspective I looked at it from. show less