Software Book Club brings readers together at TSI

TSI Software Engineers start a socially distant lunch hour book club to stay on top of trends and discuss new ideas and experiences with colleagues.

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By Doug Keller, TSI Software Engineer III

The Software Group at TSI started a book club in September of 2019. The idea was to read the assigned chapters and then discuss as a group on Thursday of every other week, over lunch. Extra initiative (in addition to the joy of learning) was that TSI bought the books, and the lunch! 

We started off small with only 6 members, but over the course of four books, the club has now grown to 13 members. The current work-from-home situation in 2020 means that we now meet via video-conference (and provide our own lunch), but we've adapted and it's still interesting, enlightening, and fun, plus it provides an additional opportunity for social interaction that’s missing in many of our lives these days.

The first books we read include:

• Test Driven Development by Kent Beck
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton with Peter Economy
• Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher & William Ury
• And next up is: The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim

All of these books provided plenty of principles and perspectives to ponder. Not everything has been directly applicable to our projects, but some parts were pertinent and practical to implement.

What are you reading?