Bibliography

Even older texts can contain timeless insights — don’t judge a book by its publishing date

Yes, some of the references are to older editions — mostly pulled from my own well-worn techie bookshelf. Call it retro with intent. It just goes to show: reuse and evolution aren’t passing trends; they’re how things actually move forward. The Renaissance didn’t disappear — it just changed format. And while some of these texts might not be fashionable anymore, they’ve still got teeth. It’s not the ideas that age badly; it’s the hype around them. What really changes is the tooling — the thinking often holds up just fine.

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📜 Treatise and Expert opinion

Not the stuff of TED talks or tech hype. These are the thinkers who read the small print on the future of AI — ethics, consequences, and all the bits most folks skip before clicking accept.

1. Barrat, J., 2013. Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.

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🧠 Literature & Thoughtful Craft

These aren’t just for rainy-day reading. Each one reminds me that clear thinking, craft, and curiosity never go out of style.

1. Levi, P. (1990). The Wrench. Trans. W. Weaver. London: Abacus.
   (Originally published 1978 as La chiave a stella*) – brilliant, hands-on, and full of heart.

2. Hemingway, E. (1952). The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner.
   — proof that persistence and dignity can still cut through all the noise.

3. Norman, D.A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
   (Reissued as The Design of Everyday Things, 2002) – still the gold standard for explaining why some doors make us feel stupid.

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🏗️ Design Patterns & Software Architecture

The ideas that built the ideas. These are the technical foundations I come back to — not always trendy, but always useful.

1. Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., & Vlissides, J. (1994). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
   — the book that launched a thousand software interviews.

2. Fowler, M., Rice, D., Foemmel, M., Hieatt, E., Mee, R. & Stafford, R. (2003). Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
   — old-school? Maybe. Still sharp? Definitely.

3. Fowler, M. (2004). UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language. 3rd ed. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
   — short, no-nonsense, and endlessly helpful when explaining systems to people who don’t want the 800-page version.

4. Britton, C. (2001). IT Architectures and Middleware. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
   — middleware before the cloud made it fashionable again.

5. Downes, E., Clare, P. & Coe, I. (1992). SSADM: Application and Context. 2nd ed. Wokingham: Addison-Wesley.
   — yes, SSADM. Still useful when you want structure with a bit of ceremony.

6. Rock-Evans, R. (1983). A Simple Introduction to Data and Activity Analysis. London: Prentice Hall.
   — simple, yes. But it nails the fundamentals better than some newer stuff.

7. Lankhorst, M. et al. (2009). Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication and Analysis. 2nd ed. Berlin: Springer.
   — less “ivory tower,” more “roll up your sleeves.” A solid read if you want to build solution architecture that actually works in practice — not just in Visio. Even gives BPMN a proper job, instead of just making pretty swimlanes.

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🔄 Systems Thinking & Practice

Big-picture thinking, where logic meets responsibility. This is where technical know-how meets grown-up complexity.

1. Rich, B.R. and Janos, L., (1996). Skunk Works: A personal memoir of years at Lockheed. London: Little, Brown and Company.   
   —small, sharp teams given just enough autonomy to either build the future or blow the budget… and somehow managed to do the former while looking like they were doing the latter.

2. Checkland, P. (1999). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
   — if you’ve ever wanted to rescue a failing programme by stepping back, start here.

3. Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
   — timeless, despite the corporate speak — because systems don’t care about your org chart.

4. Open University (2003). Systems Thinking and Practice. Milton Keynes: OU Press.
   — part of a course, but far more insightful than most boardroom strategy decks.

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🧰 Modelling, Diagramming & Primer (OU Toolkit Series)

A toolkit in three slim volumes. These helped me teach, coach, and explain. Still do.

1. Open University (2003). Modelling. ISBN: 0749241691

2. Open University (2003). Diagramming. ISBN: 0749241675

3. Open University (2003). A Primer. ISBN: 0749255811

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📅 Project Management

A pair of books that cut through the fluff — one with structure, the other with a bit of psychology.

1. Reiss, G. (2007). Project Management Demystified. 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
   — says what it means and means what it says.

2. Parkes, P. (2011). NLP for Project Managers. London: Kogan Page.
   — when it’s not about the plan but about persuading everyone to stick to it.

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📊 Data & Enterprise Systems

Big data, small data, old data. These are the ones I revisit when the fog rolls in.

1. Kimball, R. & Ross, M. (2016). The Kimball Group Reader. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Wiley.
   — I’ve lost count of how many star schemas this has justified.

2. Baum, D. (2020). Cloud Data Science for Dummies. Hoboken: Wiley.
   — more useful than you'd think, even if you’re not a dummy.

3. Müller, T. (2020). SAP S/4HANA: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Boston: SAP Press.
   — a good place to start when SAP starts sounding like ancient Sumerian.

4. Walsh, C. (2010). Key Management Ratios: Master the Management Metrics that Drive and Control Your Business. 4th ed. Harlow: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
   — A go-to when project governance slides start drifting into waffle. Helps cut through noise with ratios that actually tell you whether you're on track — or just really good at colouring RAG statuses.

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💼 Consulting & Corporate Realism

The titles that help you keep one eye on the strategy slide — and the other on your wallet.

1. Ashford, M. (1998). Con Tricks: The World of Management Consultancy and How to Make It Work for You. London: Simon & Schuster.
   — blunt, funny, and oddly empowering. A field guide for spotting management theatre — and getting value out of it anyway.

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💬 Quotations & Cultural Commentary

Not strictly academic, but they keep the brain ticking — and the wit sharp.

1. Lloyd, J. & Mitchinson, J. (2008). Advanced Banter: The QI Book of Quotations. London: Faber & Faber.
   — insight, humour, and wisdom from people cleverer than the rest of us. Handy for talks, teaching, or just perspective.

2. Adams, S. (1996). The Dilbert Principl: A Cubicle’s-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions. London: Boxtree. The foundational text of corporate absurdity; a satirical guide to surviving (and laughing at) office life.

3. Shore, D. (2004–2012). House, M.D. [TV series]. Universal Media Studios.
   — for when your solution is wrong, your data’s incomplete, and you need a grumpy genius to say, “It’s not lupus.”

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🎨 the Artistic Scribbles and Artwork

Special thanks to ChatGPT for translating my briefs into visuals with uncanny precision and unexpected flair. While the ideas, concepts, and specifications were all mine—crafted with the care only a caffeine-fuelled strategist can provide—the artistic execution deserves credit. ChatGPT, with its Renaissance-like grasp of prompt-to-palette alchemy, delivered diagrams, icons, and scrolls that brought my imagination to life with surprising style and accuracy. A true collaboration between human intent and machine talent.

🖋️ the Master Craftsman’s Workshop 

Grateful thanks to Webador artisans, their templates, stencils, and modular carving blocks for making it remarkably easy to turn a Renaissance-inspired vision into a functioning website—with minimal drops of code or candle wax.