Getting Real Review

by Tim Frick

Fellow Chicagoans 37 Signals self-published their business opus Getting Real in 2006, so admittedly I’m a bit behind in getting around to this one, considering I read it mid-2009. It’s a worthwhile read, however, chock full of useful advice on everything from software development to customer service, business philosophy, and so on. It’s also a quick read at about 200 pages and the book’s layout brings to mind a literary journal or book of poetry, which adds to its appeal.

Getting Real touches on the basic tenets of agile development, which favors small teams over large, face-to-face communication over documentation, iterative design and development, and prototyping early (and often) during the project process. The book offers helpful advice for every step of the web app development process and repeatedly stresses a customer-centric less is more approach to building online applications or software-as-a-service (SaaS).

The writing is laced with a bit of attitude. Mostly, the humor and irreverence work well for the content, but sometimes it comes off as a bit cocky. I also found the book didn’t take subtle nuances of client-vendor relationships when building web apps into enough consideration. That’s fine if you’re just building apps for yourself and a potential customer base, but if you are required to answer to a client for the apps you build, things tend to get a bit trickier. I felt the book didn’t effectively address that.

Overall, however, the book has tons of great advice on how to build a better project, not only for project managers and developers but designers, writers, salespeople and business owners as well. If you’ve got a free afternoon, definitely crack it open.

1 Comment

‘Getting Real’ is definitely a helpful book as far as providing examples of other ways to approach or think about some of the problems we face when working on a web application. What I like most about it is how concise it is. Not only is the book size itself very manageable (especially when compared to books with similar aims), but the short essay-styled chapters make it easy to pick up and read just a few each day. I found its format very helpful in actually retaining the information within the book.

Overall: thumbs up!

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