Eric Sink on the Business of Software [Paperback]

My contact at Apress recently sent me a copy of Eric Sink on the Business of Software by, of course, Eric Sink. He's the person responsible for coining the phrase "micro-ISV", and he's the chief bottle-washer at SourceGear. This book is a compilation (and commentary and/or expansion) of some of his postings from his blog, and they all relate to the subject of running a small software company where you are responsible for everything. There is very good material in here, even if you don't think you'll ever sell anything you code on your own...

Contents:

Part 1 - Entrepreneurship: What Is a Small ISV?; Whining by a Barrel of Rocks; Starting Your Own Company; Finance for Geeks; Exploring Micro-ISVs; First Report from My Micro-ISV; Make More Mistakes

Part 2 - People: Small ISVs - You Need Developers, Not Programmers; Geeks Rule and MBAs Drool; Hazards of Hiring; Great Hacker != Great Hire; My Comments on "Hitting the High Notes"; Career Calculus

Part 3 - Marketing: Finding a Product Idea for Your Micro-ISV; Marketing Is Not a Post-processing Step; Choose Your Competition; Act Your Age; Geek Gauntlets; Be Careful Where You Build; The Game Is Afoot; Going to a Trade Show; Magazine Advertising Guide for Small ISVs

Part 4 - Sales: Tenets of Transparency; Product Pricing Primer; Closing the Gap, Part 1; Closing the Gap, Part 2; Just Do It

Index

I think every decent developer/programmer has at some point imagined writing some piece of software that they could sell and make a fortune on. It's true that a very, very small minority ever act on that, but it's not as far-fetched as you might think in the Internet Age. Eric Sink has made many of the mistakes common to geeks trying to run a business, and he's come out of it with hard-earned wisdom and a company that actually thrives in their niche. If you take the time to read and learn from his examples, you'll go into the world of software product sales with much better odds of not blowing yourself up before you even begin. The book is written in a humorous, conversational tone, and it's a fun read that goes by quickly.

Even if you're not planning on creating the next "killer app", you can still learn quite a bit. The section on people applies to anyone who has a career in software development, and the "Career Calculus" chapter should be required reading. Since I tend to think of myself as a single-person company who just happens to have a regular position at a large company, the insights in this section will make me more valuable to both my current employer and to myself.

The *only* fault I find in this book is one that's common to compilations. Certain examples and sayings tend to be repeated over time, and there's many months between sightings. When they appear in back to back chapters of a compilation, you start to wonder if you misplaced your bookmark. I've downgraded reviews based on this phenomenon in the past, but I can't do it here. I just found so much value in the essays that the repeated stuff didn't elicit the normal reaction...

This book would make my "recommended reading" list with no problem. In fact, I know someone who actually *is* a micro-ISV (party of one), and this book is heading off to him just as soon as I finish this review. I'll be interested to hear his take on Sink's book "from the front lines of the war".

Mildly interesting to anybody involved in software development; reasonably useful if you're involved in _managing_ SW development; indispensable if you're thinking of starting a SW development firm or joining a startup in a very early phase. Each chapter is well written, although the book as a whole suffers a bit in terms of organization by too closely reflecting the chapters' origins as blog entries -- deeper editing might have made the book a better experience when reading from start to finish.

If you have been following up Eric Sink's essays on his blog, you probably already have bought this book and enjoyed every single line of it. For others, Eric Sink is `Software Craftsman' at SourceGear and a writer extraordinaire on all things technology related.

Eric's writings range from trenches of software development life cycle, management, people, software business, innovation, process and software engineering. This 300 page book is divided into four parts: Entrepreneurship, People, Marketing and Sales. Entrepreneurship section consists of seven essays dealing with topic of starting and running your software business, its pitfalls, pros and cons. People section comprises of six chapters which mainly deal about people problems, what makes a good hire and how employee's behavior can impact productivity. This section comprises of advice about recruitment, interviews, spotting talents and bewares of `bad eggs' etc. Marketing section is the largest, constitutes nine chapters on marketing strategy and communication. This is followed by Sales section which is essentially about contemporary sales techniques and concepts for the software market. There are lots of ideas in the book, some of which I don't necessarily agree with. Nevertheless, it makes a very good reading written from a developer turned manager prospect who has been working in the industry for quite some time, in the industry where we count time in dog years. An interesting thing I noted in contrast with Joel Spolsky was that Eric doesn't credit higher education towards innovation as much as Joel does, but then again if you'll look at the portfolio of these experts in their particular genre, the reason will become obvious.

The writing is simple and easy to understand. What I enjoy mostly about the book is the humane feeling and the voice author writes in, it's very personable and you get to know the lessons in the forms of quotations and stories. Author has an innate ability to keep the reader interested.

To conclude, "Eric Sink on the business of software" is a page turner, a must read for techies who want to escalate their statuses from mere coders, managers who would want to better understand and manage developers and also for wannabe entrepreneurs who would love to see the secrets of the trade all in one place.

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