Reflections on Rework by 37signals

When I left university in 1999 my first job was at a small software company in the UK. There were five of us and most of the time we worked from home in different cities. We had what would now be described as an agile approach to development and created some great software that we sold to enterprise customers. We worked hard but also had fun. However something didn’t feel right.

Somehow it felt like we were cheating.

I didn’t understand how a small team like ours could compete with “proper” companies. As I saw it, big companies had hundreds of suit-wearing geniuses in big offices churning out perfect software.

It was not until I worked for large organisations that I realised that the way most large companies develop software is often slow, unproductive or completely broken. It is like a sickness and even big names like IBM, Microsoft or Google aren’t immune. I now think that perhaps they had it right in 1999 at the first company I worked for all along.

Rework is a book on a similar subject. It takes apart the conventional wisdom of how to run a company and suggests different approaches.

It is written by owners of the small but very successful software company called 37Signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier. The company produces a number of web applications and is also famous for inventing Ruby on Rails. For years they have been writing a popular blog called Signal vs. Noise. This book is very much based on that blog and if you have been an avoid reader you will not find much new. If you haven’t, it is a worthwhile and easy read.

The book itself is a series of pieces of advice with good reasoning behind them. There is nothing revolutionary or even partially new. However, all the ideas are expressed clearly, directly and at times they got me thinking. That is a good thing.

My three favourite nuggets of advice were:

– Planning is guessing
– Fire the workaholics
– Outside Money is Plan Z

If you went to business school the advice in this book will probably contradict what you were taught and give you a different perspective. It is up to you to work out whether the advice is good or not. That said a lot of it is common sense.

Rework is a short book and you should be able to read it in a few hours. If you are thinking of starting a software company and are put off because you think you need a massive amount of funding, hundreds of people or a uniquely brilliant idea to be successful read Rework and be prepared to have your mind changed.

Image credit: cjc4454. All opinions are made in the author’s individual capacity.

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