More on culture – Getting Real

To carry on the culture theme, I’ve recently been reading 37 Signals‘ book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application. For those that don’t know, 37 Signals are the guys behind simple but useful collaboration tools like Basecamp, Backpack and Highrise.

It may describe itself as a book about web application development, but so many of the lessons can be applied to any organisation – and that can (and should) include government of course. I ordered the hard copy of the book, via LuLu, but you can read it for free, online. I’ve picked out some of my favourite bits, and linked them below for your reading pleasure.

• Be yourself
• It’s a Problem When It’s a Problem
• Half, Not Half-Assed
• Human Solutions
• Test in the Wild
• Meetings Are Toxic
• You Can’t Fake Enthusiasm
• Wordsmiths
• Optimize for Happiness
• Open Doors
• Don’t Do Dead Documents
• Free Samples
• Ride the Blog Wave
• Feel The Pain
• All Bugs Are Not Created Equal
• Ride Out the Storm
• Go With the Flow
• Start Your Engines