These 9 Books will change the way you approach DevOps
Here are a number of books that will improve your DevOps approach
Besides living DevOps, I actually read a lot, and I think it helps me get some different perspectives and makes sure that I get outside of my own bubble and experience. So, there are a few books I thought I would recommend for you to take a look at.
The Phoenix Project
Apparently, everyone who does DevOps needs to read at least once. It’s a great book. It’s a more story-based scenario by Gene Kim and co., that says look; let’s walk through an actual fictional example of an enterprise that has challenges and starts implementing these sorts of DevOps practices. Really a good story, good read.
The DevOps Handbook
This is one of the books that came out from the same author is now meant to be a companion book that definitely influenced some of my thinking around scaling DevOps and is definitely worth a read. Some good practices, some good detailed implementation information.
Start and Scaling DevOps In The Enterprise
Really great book as well by Gary Gruver. Read this recently. Again, some good information about actually taking DevOps practices and respecting the enterprise constraints, but being able to introduce this successfully in those environments.
Lean Enterprise
Lean Enterprise is a great book by Barry O’Reilly and co. Again, it talks about doing lean and delivery-focused things in a large company. Well worth the read.
There are also some potentially non-traditional books like;
The Goal
This is one that really started the movement, and this was more again from a lean perspective and looking at the theory of constraints and applying some of these practices that worked in manufacturing, and thinking about those and surfacing this idea of throughput and delivery in an IT environment as well. You could start to apply that. It’s not IT-centric, but it gives you a lot of ideas that actually inspired The Phoenix Project. A good book by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
Team of Teams
It’s a great book by Stanley A. McChrystal and co. that looks at the idea of changing the culture to become more nimble and adaptable and not have necessarily this top-down planning organization that loses to more nimble competitors. In this case, this is dealing with actual armed conflict. But at the same time, a lot of good insight and advice about those that are trying to change an entrenched culture.
American Icon
Similarly, the great book “American Icon” by Bryce G. Hoffman looked at the transformation of Ford from a company that was dealing with the automotive crisis, and they had to, again, become data-driven and empowered to actually save their company. And so the story is often about how they broke down silos, how did they increase transparency, and how did they become more adaptive to customer needs and not just simply giving in to the corporate inertia.
Creativity, Inc
Creativity, Inc. by Amy Wallace and Edwin Catmull. It’s the story of Pixar, but again, how does a very nimble, quick-moving Pixar get acquired by Disney and still survive? And it was a really, again, good story on those changes that you have to make and how do you somehow make sure you keep your core culture and your core principles while becoming more nimble.
Designing Delivery
And then finally, the great book Designing Delivery from Jeff Sussna. It’s a different way of thinking about services, and it’s important to read as you think about what are the new roles of things like QA. What are the ways to think about actually delivering a service successfully to customers? All of these are great books to read to simply give you a different perspective on what you’re trying to solve and not just see DevOps as a set of practices or a set of tools you have to implement, but respecting some of the organizational change and some of the actual psychological components of what you’re trying to do here.
Thanks for reading.
