This book is really great. If you have a small company to run day by day, it is the perfect choice to share a mantra and a method with your people. It works. I'm so enthusiastic about it, that I'm contributing a lot in translating it for free in Italian (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/GR_ita.php)

I believe some of the main issues within corporations is their definition of what the core is of their business. This book inspires on bringing the fundamental ideas back to the basics. Launching applications fast, lightweight, and embracing "collective intelligence" from users.

Keeping it Real.....NAYM SAYIN.

This book was very helpful to me. I have found that you can readily apply it to any kind of project you might like to create. It is funny, fun, and embodies the spirit it espouses. Keep it simple. Get to the point. Have fun. It is about a way of creating things that keeps work fun, and gets products out fast, where they can be responded to by the actual users, and modified based on their feedback as required. Of all the business and marketing books I have read in the last year, this is one of the top ones. The only thing is: Don't assume it just applies to software! It doesn't.

37 Signals are regarded by many as being a very cool web application design company. In may ways, they are. But this book is as much as manifesto as a method, and you need to bear a number of basic facts in mind when reading it: primarily that the authors answer to nobody but themselves - they have no clients. While the book mentions this in passing, it's really an issue that's swept under the carpet. If you have a client, or are being contracted to produce software for a third party, many of the methods described in this book will ensure that you will never work for those people again. It's not difficult to work out what those bits are though so no mystery there.

But even if you are in the happy position of designing and building your own software for your own customers, you would be well to look at the results of 37 Signals's own work and ask yourself whether it's any better or worse than any other software. It would probably have been fun - not to say actually easy - to produce, but would it be better software to use?

I think that for all the iconoclasm of Getting Real, what 37 Signals actually produce (Basecamp, Ta-Da Lists, etc.) is not any better than other software of its type. But that's just my opinion. You should make that judgement for yourself after reading this book - and most of all bear in mind that some of what they are saying is more ideological than practical.

I just loved this book and read it in a manner of hours.

I like this book A TON because it contains excellent information about keeping it simple and at the same time offers tidbits of great inspiration and insight on almost every page.

If you are a developer, designer, and entrepreneur or simply want to be inspired to Get Real then I highly suggest you read this book, which is a quick read because they kept it simple.

The only negative is the use of some profanity which is always unnecessary.

Keep up the great work 37Signals and any other books you write I am sure to purchase!

It is really an excellent book, gives alot of inspiration in doing the right thing. The only really anoying thing is that the TOC is not correct. The pagenumbers are incorrect, pointing to the wrong page.