Xanpan official, the end of the beginning?

This blog post marks the official release of “Xanpan: Team Centric Agile Software Development”.

You can now buy:

• Xanpan electronic version from LeanPub with free updates.
• Xanpan printed version from Lulu which includes a code for free electronic copy of from LeanPub, which in turn entitles you to a free electronic updates.

A book I never set out to write. A book I’m glad I’ve written. A book which has been very different to write than my previous books.

I say this is the official release because:

• I don’t intend to revisit this manuscript for a while: although I’m already eyeing a small title change and I’ve found one small error to correct this morning.
• The printed version of the book is now available to buy.
• I need to stop fiddling with this material to move onto new material.

I’ve also updated the website for Xanpan (xanpan.org) with excerpts and such.

Until now the book was entirely a LeanPub effort, that meant I could sell the book and push out changes quite easily. But once I accepted that this was a book I decided it also needs a physical manifestation. I’ve used Lulu for several small projects in the past and they seemed a natural choice - particularly since LeanPub provide a couple of small features to make moving to Lulu easier.

But, once you start doing physical copies the cost of changes increase, you start to encounter batch processing and one time activities (e.g. reviews and ISBN numbers) and incremental change becomes slower and possibly more difficult.

Although one advantage of Lulu over LeanPub is that Lulu has a review system - and there are already several Xanpan reviews posted. (Post script: Johnny Graber has posted a review of Xanpan on his blog.)

Neither version is yet available through regular bookshops, specifically Amazon. Once you start doing that more options close down.

More importantly there are some new essays I want to include under the Xanpan umbrella, topics I think need to be discussed. While I could simply add them to this volume I want to change my focus and to do that I think it will help to have a different target in mind.

Hence I’ve started work on “Xanpan volume 2: Management Heuristics”. This also means that at some time in the future I’ll rename this volume “Xanpan volume 1: Team Centric Agile Software Development.”

So, consider the current publication as a Stable Intermediate Form. No promises on when any of Xanpan2 will be available but if you would like to follow progress sign up on LeanPub.