Not Fired Up About This One

I read This Might Get Me Fired with a peopleware book club and for me the most enjoyable part of this read was the discussion group.

Throughout the book Larkin reviews tactics to gain influence and launch a product in eight weeks. Ultimately, the goal is to have something usable that can be put in front of real users to generate feedback to validate the value of investing in the product.

This is one of those books where I don't feel like you would lose value from reading a blog post. In fact, my recommendation is to save yourself the time and just review a thorough outline. It'll get you the same value. That being said, this is a really short read (139 pages) so it's not as though the book is overloaded with unnecessary examples.

In fact, one of my biggest complaints is that Larkin doesn't go into enough detail. He leaves out real business scenarios like what happens when you have to integrate this back into a monolithic system. He skips addressing how to overcome obstacles like if you don't have access to users and you don't happen to just "know a guy."

What he does well is outline the basic principles and ingredients you need to successfully launch a product within an organization. He prioritizes addressing business critical issues and validating all assumptions with user testing. In my experience, this is pretty basic scrum principles which is why the book lacks impact. He emphasizes the importance of needing influence within leadership (The Godfather) and also a grassroots coalition (The Secret Society) in order to catalyze change.

Overall This Might Get Me Fired is a fine read, but there are better books I would recommend first. Your time might be better spent reading the blog about the book, but if you listen quick this might just be an easy add to your morning commute.

Tags

Business
Design
Peopleware