Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work

by Robert Austin and Lee Devin

Book Overview

Artful Making offers the first proven, research-based framework for engineering ingenuity and innovation. This book is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Harvard Business School... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0130086959
• ISBN13: 9780130086952
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: FT Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Building Bridges

We have this tendency, understandable but at times pernicious, to bracket the world off, to make compartments for our relatively unexamined opinions. One of the worst examples of this is the notion that individuals in the arts and folks in business have nothing to offer one another: artists squander resources and are fundamentally dysfunctional when it comes to practical matters; business people care only about the bottom-line and apply an industrial model to whatever they do. In their book, Artful Making, Lee Devin and Rob Austin frustrate this kind of thinking and in doing so open up new lines of communication and cooperation amongst individuals who actually have much to offer one another. In creating these bridges, Artful Making offers readers a fundamentally generous view of human experience as evidenced by its key terms - collaboration, ensemble, release, play.

A Lot to Offer ANY Reader!

"Artful Making" is a great book. Before reading it, and even into its first few chapters, I was under the impression the book was aimed mainly at midlevel management of medium-to-large corporations:a large group, to be sure, but one to which I do not happen to belong. But I was mistaken . . . I soon realized that the key qualities of release-collaboration-ensemble-play can fit any setting where individuals or groups of people want to create something valuable. What Austin and Devin are talking about is developing a process and a result that unite in a never-ending productive cycle, where each "iteration" is different, but yet a necessary prelude to what follows. We can all benefit, because we all have the same need to stay away from the "staleness" and complacency that can be so deadly to personal and professional growth. "Artful Making" will help you find the way.I recommend the book completely. Read it over and over and keep a pencil handy for special passages!

The Art of Adaptable Software Teams

The principles that this book discusses: Release, Collaboration Ensemble and Play are extremely relevant to creating effective software teams. The principles are inspired by observing how theatre companies work, but they also have a basis in lean manufacturing. If you work as a software developer or manager and have ever worked on a theatre production (community theatre or at school) a light will go on immediately. If you haven't The data that the authors provide about lean manufacturing practices and software development will convince you that there is a lot that we can learn from this metaphor. The theatre examples will be helpful in explaining how the principles work if you need to communicate them to a manager who does not understand software development. Buy this book and place it along side your books on agile software development; you will want to read it and refer back to it frequently.

Insightful, unique and groundbreaking.

I have had the privilege of studying under Prof. Rob Austin, and I this book continues the dialogue that has always informed Rob's intellectual search--how do two seemingly disparate disciplines, in this case theater production and knowledge based business, converge to inform processes that are virtually identical thus providing a path where each can improve the results of the other. Both he and Lee Devin have written a concise, powerfully convincing narrative that offers a new approach on how to manage complexity, embrace ambiguity and uncertainty and innovate reliably under strict deadlines. Managing "release", rapid iterative development, and creating the right "ensemble" are some of the key concepts explored in the book. Highly recommended for anyone presented with the challenges of how to innovate and perform reliably under deadlines.

Reliable Innovation

For those who need to innovate in a world of change, reduced cycle times, and demanding customers. Austin and Devin provide a management framework for delivering innovation reliably and effectively. Concepts in the book--Artful Making, Reconceiving, Low cost iteration, and working on the Edge--all resonate with my experiences in the Agile Software Development movement. "Artful Making" will go on my must read list!