Every now and then someone passes me a book. In some cases such as when I got my hands on the VSTO book from Addison Wesley its pure technical book. In this case I was passed a copy of what I would call a "Business of Software" book. The book in question is from Joel Spolsky's "Joel on Software": http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?z=y&pwb=1&ean=9781590593899 Yes it was released more then a year ago - which is usually an indication in the technical market that the book is out of date. However, this book isn't about how to work with version X of Product Y. It's a book that talks about things that people who work and in particular senior people who work in companies that build software need to know.
Joel talks about everything from what a program manager's real role should be, to how testing saves money and along the way introduces some simple tests to see if your company is really good at creating and managing software. He throws in things like why you shouldn't multi-task developers, and why you shouldn't do multi-person interviews but should instead have a candidate meet individually with multiple people. The key being this book isn't about A software product - it's a guide to managing software projects. In general if you are trying to run a software development organization (you don't have to be running your own company) you should read this book.
The book itself is a collection of edited essays which have almost all appeared in his blog. The blog: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ is still running strong and in fact one of his most recent posts fits well into the model of the type of essay in this book. Reading this post the other night I was reminded of why I immediately recommended that our entire managment team (if not entire company) read this book. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html Of course the management team has other more generic MBA style books that they'll read but then as the MBA's know: Running a software company is no different from say selling Pepsi.