Christoph Jahn

When David A. Fisher wrote this paper in 2006, the hype around Web Services and SOA had just begun. The point that struck me most when reading the executive summary, was that Fisher does not limit his thoughts to technical systems. Instead he accepts the fact that the involved people are also an important part [...]

Scottish music is more than just bagpipes. Probably the most well-known band is Runrig, although I sometimes get the impression that they had their greatest success in the 1990s. But the CD I want to recommend today is not from them (although I have some of their stuff and certainly like it).

Rough Guide to Scottish [...]

SOA in Practice
Nicolai M. Josuttis. O’Reilly Media 2007, Paperback, 352 pages, $27.54

A colleague recommended this book (link to amazon.com and amazon.de) to me and I was not disappointed. On the contrary, this was one of the most interesting IT books I have come across so far. The author is pretty well known in the SOA space and a [...]

My favourite podcast is Manager Tools, that offers an incredible amount of tips and useful background information on many aspects of management. A friend told me about it some 2 years ago and since then I’m hooked. The really cool thing is that all shows have actionable content. They typically last about 30-40 minutes, [...]

If you spent your teen years in the middle to late 1980s chances are you owned a Commodore 64 home computer (or a C-128 as I did). For those of us that want to re-live these years there is now a chance.

On the Edge
Brian Bagnall. Variant Press 2005, Hardcover, 548 pages, $119.65

This book gives a comprehensive description from [...]

Today I would like to tell you about a very effective way to organize your work. It is the “Getting Things Done” approach from David Allen. Some people argue that due to its simplicity it does not deserve to be called methodology. In my view this is a completely academic argument. On [...]

Exploring Requirements
Donald C. Gause. Dorset House Publishing Company, Incorporated 1989, Hardcover, 320 pages, $22.42

We probably all know that gathering requirements is not as easy as it may sound. And it’s also pretty clear that the issue is not primarily around technical things but communication and people. I can recommended this book (link to amazon.com and amazon.de) to everyone [...]

During a recent trip to Prague a colleague and I ended up in the restaurant Fish next to the Vltava river and quite near to the famous Charles Bridge. This was pure coincidence, since we had decided to just enter the next restaurant that would be “somewhat acceptable”. (It had been a very hot day [...]

The Effective Executive
Peter F. Drucker. Harper Paperbacks 2006, Paperback, 208 pages, $6.19

For those of you who have never heard of Peter Drucker, be assured that he is one of the most prominent authors of management literature. Some even say that he invented management as a discipline. In any case he published a number of books and papers, many [...]