Going on three decades ago, Eli Goldratt wrote "
The Goal: A Process of Continuing Improvement", which is fundamentally a book about operations research.
No, no, don't fall asleep - he brought in Jeff Cox, a novelist, and made an actual story, about a real plant manager, struggling to keep his plant open despite intense competition, some of it foreign, some of it with serious pay disparities.
The book was one of a kind.
In his second edition, Goldratt tells the story of trying to get his book published. He said that his most interesting rejection note came from McGraw-Hill. They told him that if he wrote a love story, they would publish it, and put it on the romance shelf of the bookstores. If he wrote a business book, they'd publish it, and put it on the management shelf. The problem was that Goldratt had written a love story about business -- and they didn't know what to do with it.
They took a pass, but the book was eventually published by North River Press, and is still in print today. (So there, McGraw-Hill!)
Where is the love story about software testing?
Time passes ...
In 1997, Tom DeMarco writes his book "
The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management."
The goal was a little different - it was a project management textbook wrapped around a story of a project manager hired to run projects for a certain small eastern European nation.
Ok, that's pretty much the same.
I guess the best distinction I can make is that where "The Goal" is a novel that taught you principles of The Theory of Constraints, "The Deadline" is a textbook that appears in the format of a Novel.
In any case, the are both far, far better reads than any textbook I can recall short of advanced classes in graduate school where the students picked the books and wrote papers and rotated through teaching the class.
But I digress.
So far we have a novel about operations management novel, and a textbook on project management in the form of a novel.
Where's the testing novel?
Well, I'm hoping my astute readers will correct me and make a big list at the bottom, but I do have one to add:
John Donelley's Gold, a novel
written by a tester, Brian J. Noggle.
Brian's been doing freelance testing and technical writing for years; we've
had him on the podcast to talk about testing, and if you don't follow
@QAHatesYou on twitter, gosh, you're missing out.
And he finally wrote that novel - for which I spent a fair amount of last week, frantically turning pages.
No, this isn't a heavy-handed book about testing with cardboard characters who exist to demonstrate "Laws of Software."
It's a real novel, with real characters.
It's just, well ... for us.
The characters are in the (mostly) technical ranks at a DotCom just after the crash of 2011. The company has had it's first cash crunch; we meet them the characters on layoff day.
It's not huge spoiler that they are headed for the hatchet man's axe, nor that the CEO is incredibly well-off, golden parachute in hand.
What
is surprising is that in the heyday of the company, the CEO, John Donnelly, bought a gold bar to symbolize the prosperity and success of nTropics.com.
Our friends decide to steal it.
This is an Incredibly Good Book
No, it's not a morally bankrupt premise. No, it's not a silly action tale.
The thing that drew me in the most was the characters; I wondered what Michele saw in Kevin, and hoping she'd get together with Edward -- yes, this book turned me into a fifteen year old girl. (Metaphorically. C'mon.)
We also get to see Kevin develop as a person, learn a little bit about John Donnelly, see how great testers think -- and, of course, there are a few D&D jokes thrown in.
Plus just enough typos (perhaps three in three hundred pages) to make it feel like a treasure hunt, not a slog through something that wasn't copy-edited.
If you test software, if you do technical writing, tech support, or programming, in North America in the early 21st century (especially if you are a dotCom survivor), this book is for you.
If you don't want to risk it, check out the
Kindle version, that costs all of
one dollar. That's right, a buck; it's cheaper than a couple of hershey bars or that 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew.
Plus, you can get a free kindle reader app for the iPod or iPad, too.
No heavy-handed textbook here, but you might pick up a few pointers about risk.
What can I say? I read the book, it made my day. I liked it.
I suspect you might like it too.