The software craftsman

The book covers a wide range of subjects related to our profession and is full of advice and personal stories which illustrate the current state of our industry, how things could be better, and what developers can do to bring more professionalism, pragmatism, and pride to our industry.

The preface has a very inspirational story about how Sandro encountered his first mentor and how that relationship has shaped his personal and professional life.

• Chapter 1 Software Development in the Twenty-First Century

  Describes how wrongly seniority is measured in most companies and explains how developers should evolve and behave in order to cope with more modern ways of working.

• Chapter 2 Agile

  Describes the problems with most Agile adoptions and how Software Craftsmanship can help to solve them by providing a good balance between process and technical practices.

• Chapter 3 Software Craftsmanship

  Defines the Software Craftsmanship ideology, providing an in-depth history and reason for what became an international movement.

• Chapter 4 The Software Craftsmanship Attitude

  Explains the attitude expected from a software craftsman and provides a lot of advices in how to become a better professional.

• Chapter 5 Heroes, Goodwill, and Professionalism

  Addresses how to deal with pressure and tight deadlines in a professional manner.

• Chapter 6 Working Software

  Describes the problems of low quality software and how blaming the business for it is not an option. With a different attitude, developers could make things much better.

• Chapter 7 Technical Practices

  Helps developers to understand and communicate the business value associated to technical practices, increasing the chances to have them adopted. It also talks about pragmatism and accountability.

• Chapter 8 The Long Road

  This chapter is about the determination that is needed to have a successful career. This is one of Sandro’s favourite chapter and we won’t spoil it by telling you more. :)

• Chapter 9 Recruitment

  For most companies recruitment is broken. This chapters explains how to attract great developers, write job descriptions, and have *proactive* recruitment.

• Chapter 10 Interviewing Software Craftsmen

  States that the interview process is a business negotiation and provides advice for both companies and candidates to reach mutually beneficial agreements.

• Chapter 11 Interview Anti-Patterns

  Many good developers ended up rejecting a company because of a bad experience during the interviews. This chapter provides plenty of advice on the things that should be avoided while interviewing developers.

• Chapter 12 The Cost of Low Morale

  Addresses the impact low morale has on an organisation and how to fix it injecting some passion.

• Chapter 13 Culture of Learning

  Provides many ideas and examples for creating and nurturing a culture of learning. It also shows that any developer can do it even with no support from management.

• Chapter 14 Driving Technical Changes

  Identifies different patterns of skepticism and offers many ideas on how to overcome them. It also provides advice on how to establish trust and how to increase the chances of convincing people with opposite views.

• Chapter 15 Pragmatic Craftsmanship

  Craftsmanship without pragmatism is not craftsmanship. Quality is not expensive—lack of skills is. This is an important chapter that busts a few myths about Craftsmanship being expensive and slow.

• Chapter 16 A Career as a Software Craftsman

  Introduces a big shift in attitude when it comes to managing our own careers. This is a strong chapter that inspired many developers since the book was published. We guarantee that you won’t look at your career with the same eyes again.