Books, podcasts, videos, and articles I recommend. In no particular order.

Books

  • The Lean Startup

    Eric Ries

    My number one recommendation. Not just for startup entrepeneurs, but anyone who is performing any form of innovation, even in large established enterprise.

    It’s about rapid learning with validated experiments, learning what your customers truly want, and constantly challenging your hypothesis with continuous timely feedback.

    Also a Great Audiobook.

  • The Phoenix Project

    Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford

    Told in a novel format from the perspective of Bill Palmer, the IT manager of the fictional company Parts Unlimited.

    The company is in the middle of a transformation project, codenamed The Phoenix Project, where failure means outsourcing Bill’s entire department, and success may bring the company back from falling revenues and customer dissatisfactin.

    The narrative can be a bit clumsy at times but it’s a great soft introduction to the meaning of DevOps and how similar it is to Lean Manufacturing.

  • The Unicorn Project

    Gene Kim

    The events of The Phoenix Project told from a different perspective. This time the story follows Maxine, a senior developer who’s moved onto the Phoenix Project after a very public outage, and told to stay out of trouble and not make waves. This one is written more for Developers and Engineers, and not as accessible as The Phoenix Project was to the wider community.

  • The Goal

    Eliyahu M. Goldratt

    When you read this one you’ll quickly learn where The Phoenix Project took it’s inspiration from. Originally published in 1984 some of the applications are a little dated, but you can still take a lot from this book.

    Told in a business novel format like The Phoenix Project, and a great introduction to The Theory of Constraints, in which the throughput of any complex system is soley constrained by the throughput of a single activity.

  • Isn’t It Obvious

    Eliyahu M. Goldratt

    A little dated, but another business novel told from the perspective of a manager of a regional retail outlet. This book is great if you’re a logistics nerd like me and love concepts like just-in-time, short inventory restocking cycles, pull based demand and ERP.

  • Turn The Ship Around!

    L. David Marquet

    One of the best books I’ve read. The true story told from the perspective of David Marquet, the a newly appointed captain of one of the worst performing nuclear-powered submarines in the US Navy. Using an unorthodox framework he dubs ‘leader-leader’, he changes the culture of the crew and brings the ship’s ranking into the highest of it’s class.

  • The Toyota Way

    Jeffrey K. Liker

    A ground up view of Toyota made for the general audience. This book covers the principles of Toyota in depth with not just a how-to, but a why. In my opinion, a must for any DevOps enthusiasts.

  • 2 Second Lean

    Paul A. Akers

    Paul’s concept of Lean is about making it fun, easy and sustainable. No complicated value stream maps, calculations or charts. Start small by trying to make just 2 second improvements in a process, and snowballing from there. This book is available for free.

  • Wardley Maps

    Simon Wardley

    Very opinionated and a bit myopic so take with a grain of salt, but there’s still a lot of great wisdom you can take away.

    The core concept is like a value stream map, but the key concept is that the position of nodes on the map relate to the stage of evolution of that particular piece of technology, as well as their observability to the customer. I would start with the Youtube video first.

    Available on Medium, as well as many videos available on Youtube.

  • Deep Work

    Cal Newport

    Something I’d consider compulsory reading for anyone. Cal Newport’s book highlights the need for rapid learning and high level work in the 21st century market, as well as creating a work ethic that sustains a craftsman mentality.

  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You

    Cal Newport

    Another great book from Cal. This one challenges the concept of “follow your passion”, where passion will follow being excellent at your field, not the other way around.

  • Design is a Job

    Mike Monteiro

    This one is great for freelancers. It’s written for Web Design agencies/freelancers, but most of the concept are applicable for any creative or technical workers. Great Audiobook as well.

  • Ultralearning

    Scott H. Young

    A stratergy for aggressive, ultra fast selt learning. Scott talks about methods he believes enable ‘hacking’ the learning model to learn new concepts extremely rapidly.

    A bit longer than it needs to be, and the audio book isn’t fantastic as it’s self narrated. I’d recommend trying a written copy as it’s a book you’d want to reference easily.

  • Beyond The Phoenix Project

    Gene Kim and John Willis

    An audio book which is more like a long podcast episode to be honest. Gene and John talk about the DevOps movement as well as the precusors like Lean, Deming, and Goldratt. Definitely worth an Audible credit.

Podcasts

  • Freelance Transformations
  • Gemba Academy
  • DevOps and Docker Talk
  • Django Chat
  • JS Party
  • Software Engineering Daily
  • Syntax