Unlike my other books where I typically dive into a single tool or a single process, this time, I chose a different approach. Instead of going to great lengths trying to help someone become proficient in one thing, this time, I am trying to give you a quick introduction into many different tools and processes. We will skip the potentially lengthy discussions and in-depth exercises. What I want, this time, is to help you make decisions. Which tool works the best for a given task? What should we explore in more depth, and what is a waste of time? The goal is not to learn everything about a tool in detail but rather to dive into many concepts and a plethora of tools right away. The aim is to get you up-to-speed fast while producing useful "real world" results. Think of each chapter as a crash-course into something with the outcome that you can use right away.

I will assume that you don't have time to read hundreds of pages to learn something that you are not even sure is useful. Instead, I will guess that you got up to one hour to read a summary, and then decide if a tool is worthwhile a more significant investment.

This is a catalog of the tools, and the processes I believe are useful in this day and age. I will try to transfer what I think works well and what might have been the right choice in the past but is not optimal anymore.

Nevertheless, even if the scope of this book is different than others, some things are still the same. This is not a book with lots of theory. Sure, there will be some text you might need to read, but most of the content consists of hands-on exercises. I always believed that the best way to learn something is through practice, and I am not giving up on that. This is a book full of real-world hands-on examples, and each chapter will let you dive into a different tool or a process. At the end of each, you will be able to say, "now I know what this is about, and now I can make a decision whether it is a worthwhile investment."

Think of this book as a catalog, combined with patterns and blueprints.