Hugo Corbucci's Blog

Showing all posts tagged #book-reviews:


Brazil's dance with the devil - by Dave Zirin

Posted on January 10th, 2015

Dave Zirin’s book brings his journalistic view around the impacts of hosting the World Cup and the Olympics in Brazil. Dave starts by describing a bit of the reality he found in Brazil during his investigative trip. He moves on to describe some of Brazil's history from the Portuguese colonization to the US imposed dictatorship. With this basis, he goes on to explain Lula’s administration and...


The curious incident of the dog in the night-time - by Mark Haddon

Posted on January 2nd, 2015

Beautiful book. The story of a piece of the narrator, Christopher, life starting the day he his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is killed. Christopher is a 15 year old autistic boy living in Swindon, UK. He loves puzzles and decides to investigate the murder of Wellington and writes the book to tell the story of the investigation upon suggestion by one of his teachers, Siobhan, which seems to...


ThoughtWorks Antology 2 - by various authors

Posted on December 26th, 2014

The [second of the ThoughtWorks anthology]:(http://www.amazon.com/ThoughtWorks-Anthology-Software-Technology-Innovation/dp/1937785009) about 4 years after the [first one]:(http://blog.hugocorbucci.com/thoughtworks-antology-various-authors). Like the previous one, this one balances between very narrow concrete subjects and more abstract ones which makes the book age very differently depending on the chapter.

The following notes detail each chapter:

Chapter 1: Introduction -...


In the valley of the kings - by Terrence Holt

Posted on December 20th, 2014

In this book composed of multiple short stories, Terrence Holt brings us to both the past and the future around self-discovery and death. Each story is independent and can be read in any order although it gets a little repetitive if reading from start to end in a day.

Here are notes on each story:

'O Aoyos:

Description of an epidemic disease related to seeing a word. This word...


Thoughtworks antology - by various authors

Posted on December 17th, 2014

This anthology marks the first of multiple anthologies that ThoughtWorks published.

Chapter 2: Last Mile - Roy Singham & Michael Robinson

Precursor for Continuous Delivery. Including non functional requirements at start of development cycle.
Doesn’t really provides ideas into how to avoid getting slow to release after growth. More into saying that just not...


The retrospective handbook - a guide to agile teams - by Patrick Kua

Posted on December 14th, 2014

A fairly basic book about retrospectives.

The main goal of the book is not to provide the user with tons of techniques and ideas but rather provide a starting point for teams willing to start having retrospectives.
Pat shares the basis for a retrospective along with his experiences.

Esther Derby's book provides a more structured and longer description about retrospectives but also contains fewer examples and "real" world problems one may face.

The book is a good read for those who are not used to run retrospectives and would like to start doing so in an enterprise environment where the culture is not yet established.