Rating

★★★★☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2011-08-20

Pages

208

Excellent narrative, light on content if you’re read up on personal development or agile already. The two main ideas being your brain is falliable so externalize remembering, and one person can’t manage the “super-complexity” of modern endeavours (building, surgery, by extension, software) so enforce communication between experts. This is basic agile: standups, retros, etc… so I didn’t come away with anything new.

That said, there are some ripping tales of surgery going wrong (he slashes open a patient’s chest to grab his heart and keep it beating) and plane disasters and you’ll get through it quickly (only took me a few hours). It’s enjoyable to read.

The scary thing is how much of the medical profession hasn’t adopted his recommendations yet (though I guess it’s the same with agile?).