Waltzing with Bears, review and opinion
I finally finished Waltzing with Bears this week, after nursing it for a few months.
It’s a book about “managing risks on software projects” from the authors of Peopleware.
Peopleware is one of my all time favorites, so I had high hopes going in. As you may have gathered from my previous comment, that it took me quite a while to finish this book, it didn’t live up to my expectations. So much so that a couple other books I was reading at the same time kept dragging me away from Waltzing, hence the surprisingly long time to completion. It isn’t bad, not by a long shot, it’s filled with useful insight and risk centric perspectives, it just didn’t grab on to me the way Peopleware did.
I felt passionately about the material when reading Peopleware, but felt hard pressed to connect this time around. I did glean a number of useful tidbits from it, which will serve me well in the future, so again, it is still a worthwhile read. It just isn’t in the category of books that engage you so well that you don’t want to put them down until you’re finished.
I would classify it as a text book for a college course. It contains information you absolutely should know, but isn’t something you’ll want to read for enjoyment.