20 Books Like Lean Enterprise

This book really gets under the skin of measurement and busts myths about what kind of sample size you need to get useful insights (you need far fewer data points than you think!) Having read many books on statistics, this one certainly had the strongest practical link to everyday work.

It also does an amazing job of explaining the damage done by thinking "this can't be measured", after which I was left feeling this needed to be essential management reading.

It's a book that will change how you think.

The key idea in this book is great. It's about leadership - but that really means leadership in all pursuits not just work. It uses simple questions to evaluate how you're thinking, so can re-orient on the "fundamental state of leadership". What result do you want create? What would my story be if I were living the values I expect of others? How do others feel about this situation? What strategies can I try to achieve my purpose?

It's pretty compelling stuff!

Accelerate is a book about data. The authors used data collected during their PhD projects in order to prove The DevOps is effective.

They have all sorts of different ways to measure DevOps, it sufficiency, and the fact that way more projects succeed when you do DevOps, rather than waterfall methodology.

The book essentially show can be used as evidence of return on investment when modernizing your IT department. I am a person who loves data, and thus I absolutely love this book. Also, if you listen to the audiobook version, one of the authors reads it to you and her personality really shines through in a fun way.

I really enjoyed listening to Nicole read a book about to me about data!

In my consulting gigs, I come across plenty of clueless remarks. Here's a classic one: “We're falling behind schedule, so let's hire more coders.” Or a more recent gem: “We'll be ten times more productive if we generate code with AI.”

When I encounter such nonsense, I don't facepalm or cringe. Instead, I put on my poker face and drop a quote from The Mythical Man-Month.

In an industry where last year’s book is already outdated, Fred Brooks' collection of essays has been a guiding light for nearly half a century. His aphorisms have become legendary. “The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.” “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” “There is no silver bullet.” The list goes on and on.

John Carmack, one of the greatest programmers of our times, used to revisit this book every year or… show more.

This book’s title is absolutely perfect! There’s no agenda here other than identifying things that will make you a more effective and productive programmer.

That leads to a book packed with solid advice, whether it’s about how to write code or how to think about your career. The authors are consultants, so there are plenty of clear and interesting examples drawn from many different problem domains. That’s super fun for someone like me who’s hyper-focused on a single kind of programming.

I love pattern languages. And Team Topologies brings patterns for team types and their interactions. Most importantly, they address fundamental problems of the software industry: how teams organise for fast flow, and how teams cope with cognitive load. The book steams from the author's experience in the DevOps community, and it is widely used across the world. Last but not least, Team Topologies give us a language that support organisation evolution.

My journey in the world of software development has been arduous and challenging.

One of the common struggles we all face is the overwhelming number of solutions available, making it impossible to fully grasp everything at a deep level.

Just when I thought I had mastered an approach and felt competent in it, a new shiny approach would emerge, demanding my immediate attention. It often felt like a never-ending race to keep up with the ever-evolving field.

This constant pursuit of staying relevant as a software engineer can be frustrating, as it feels like we are always lagging behind the rapidly advancing world. I discovered that knowledge of specific technologies, frameworks, or libraries does not easily transfer across different technology stacks. They are too specific and lack universality. It was then that I turned my focus to more general principles of software engineering.

I realized that there are fundamental engineering… show more.

In my quest (you can also call it a professional career), I’m drawn to complexity since we create software for complex problems. There are books on Complexity Science; however, they are very academic. This particular book gives practical advice to cope with complexity. It acknowledges the balance between the emotional and rational sides and why we must bring our full-self to any aspect of our life. The “don’t be emotional, this is work” proves to be a threat to our mental well-being and kills innovation in a company. In the book, the authors explore how to listen to our bodies in the face of complexity in an accessible way.

Technology allowed us to share information instantly; it also enabled the creation of new products. However, there is the reverse of the coin, where technology is used for abuse. Eva's book comes from her experience with survivors of abuse, and she shows how technology can be abused, and what we can use in our design process to create products that take safety into consideration. It is a must-read for anyone involved in the creation of digital products.

This is the best overview of data storage and distributed systems—two key concepts for building almost any piece of software today—that I've seen anywhere. Martin does a wonderful job of taking a massive body of research and distilling complicated concepts and difficult trade-offs down to a level anyone can understand.

I learned a lot about replication, partitioning, linearizability, locking, write skew, phantoms, transactions, event logs, and more. I'm also a big fan of the final chapter, The Future of Data Systems, which covers ideas such as "unbundling the database", end-to-end event streams, and an important discussion on ethics in programming and data systems.