Wright's "Hard Code," written by Eric Brechner's alter-ego to help stimulate discussion among development engineers at Microsoft - an idea that has been proven effective. They are thematically arranged, each helping to spark the imagination, stimulate discussion and promote debate about software development tasks and processes. They encourage developers to reexamine coding, testing, and project-management software development practices - and gain insight into their own processes to help drive excellence in large, distributed business groups.