Reg "Raganwald" Braithwaite has been working as a professional software developer since 1986, in roles ranging from Sorceror's Apprentice to Vice-President, Development. "What I've Learned From Failure" collects his very best "non-technical" essays on the subject of shipping software into a lean but concentrated book (51 pages).

Manufactured from nearly 100% recycled blog posts. "What I’ve Learned From Failure" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

1. Preface
   1. copyright notice
2. About The Author
   1. contact
3. What I've Learned From Failure
   1. Why does failure matter?
   2. The four most important causes of failure
   3. People
   4. Action
   5. Details
   6. The Schedule
   7. Software
   8. Power
   9. History
   10. Finishing
4. The Not So Big Software Design
   1. Lemons
   2. Building Better, Not Buzzwordier
   3. Where is the client?
   4. Better Software Architecture
5. Which Theory Fits the Evidence?
   1. why do theory p and theory d matter?
   2. belief drives behaviour
   3. so which theory fits the evidence?
   4. d is for "d'oh! we should have gone with p!"
6. Interlude: The Programmer's Dilemma
7. Project Management acts like a Marketplace for Information
   1. what kind of information sells?
8. Bricks
   1. software is not made of bricks
   2. assumption: it’s all about moving bricks
   3. software development is difficult to parallelize
   4. software is transfinite
   5. building software without treating it like a pile of bricks
9. Trial-and-error with a feedback cycle
   1. trial and error
   2. feedback
   3. productization
   4. the scarce resource
10. Software’s Receding Hairline
    1. receding hairlines
    2. the tyranny of the urgent
11. Interlude: The Mouse Trap
    1. The New Guy
    2. Excel, VBA, XML, XSLT, Java!
    3. Epilogue
12. Duck Programming
    1. prelude: the project
    2. what is duck programming?
    3. why duck tastes so good
    4. dangerous but manageable
    5. how to manage duck programming
    6. summary