I’m busy writing about three articles concurrently. All of which lose my interest after sitting in front of them for longer than 10 minutes. I need to step back from them for a bit and this is why I’m writing this interim post. One is a piece on big brands with horrible websites, another is self defining article to try and put my thumb on who I am, and then there is a follow up of the first one showing outstanding websites.

While I write those, have a look at 37 Signals’ book entitled Getting Real. It truly is one for your bookmarks if you’re a programmer or designer, or even a client interested in having something developed or designed.

I came across the site after reading someone’s mention of 37signals‘ business model and subsequently followed the natural progression of link following. You know how it goes. “They have a book… cool, let’s check it out *click*. They have a PDF version, cool. $19 is fair. Ah, there is a paperback version too. Nice. They have a FREE version! *click*.” And this is where I ended up.

I found a section in chapter 2 particularly interesting. It basically states that budgets and timelines can be fixed in application development should be kept flexible. It makes sense to me that if you’re to launch a piece of software, rather make it with 5 solid, well rounded features than 10 badly thought out and issued ones. An excerpt:

If you can’t fit everything in within the time and budget allotted then don’t expand the time and budget. Instead, pull back the scope. There’s always time to add stuff later — later is eternal, now is fleeting.

A 100% free 16 chapter book on keeping things real in application design. A must have for any serious geek. I mean, Basecamp… who can argue that that was not built by designers and developers in the upper 99 percentile.