33 Books Like The DevOps Handbook

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!

This book was one of the biggest inspirations for me when I wrote my book.

Running a team of technology experts is really hard, so instead of writing a reference manual or an inspirational leadership memoir, Kim tells the story of a group of people who work together to learn the same best practices that have been in use for decades in the manufacturing and project management industries.

This hits close to home since I can recognize myself and many of my colleagues in each of the vivid characters.

The Unicorn Project book picks up where The Phoenix Project book ended.

There is a new character introduced named Maxine, and I want to be Maxine when I grow up! Her character is brave, fun, and endlessly patient as she transforms the way they build software to more effective and productive methods.

She has a family, and life outside her org, which is something I feel all of us can relate to, balancing life and work. She really saves the day, over and over again, as the book proceeds to change, update, and improve every single thing they do within parts unlimited, the fictitious company in this story.

It was a very fun sequel to The Phoenix Project.

This book is set in the same universe as The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, but it's at a new company named investments unlimited.

It's also a fictitious story, but with all brand new characters, and brand new problems! In this book they cover security much more deeply than any of the other previous books, talking about how compliance and audit can work together with the information security and DevOps teams.

They talk about common problems that I have faced in many organizations, and a lot of the stories feel so familiar I wonder if the authors have followed me around throughout my career.

Although of course they save the day in the end, there are many parts of the book where we're not quite sure if they're going to make it or not with various characters learning to see things in new ways, so that they can make… show more.

Deming showed me how to think about organizational performance improvement. I was moving from a clinical psychologist in private practice to an organizational psychologist helping companies develop change strategies. I had studied and loved statistical variation in the context of scientific research, but not in the context of addressing real-world challenges. 

But Deming does something very surprising. He starts by understanding variation and then moves on to understanding organizational culture. Not the theoretical frameworks we all know, but the work world from the view of the front-line employee. Deming’s insight is that the central challenge of culture change is understanding the view of people closest to the work, the ones who perform operations.

They are not motivated by slogans and lofty ideas but by producing great products and services. Taking pride in the work they are doing is central to performance; lost by management fads and enhanced by doing it… show more.

We all know how important culture is to DevOps.

Well, Doug McGregor was one of the earliest proponents of healthy workplace culture. The Human Side of Enterprise was written during the 1950s and contains the kind of advice you might associate with Dan Pink’s more recent book, Drive.

If you want to read a book from the pivot point between command and control management and modern theories of motivation, this is the place to start.

I've seen organizations struggle with adopting a business-led API strategy. A key part of doing this involves creating an effective operating model around how different business units or departments can own and deliver APIs effectively.

Luis' book addresses this challenge by presenting various operating models for APIs (centralized, federated, and platform-based) and offering guidance on creating a platform-based operating model. He addresses API architecture as well and I like his idea of API-Led architectures.

This is my go-to reference for organizations that wish to adopt APIs at scale and need to organize multiple teams and departments that own APIs. I found myself referencing it frequently on a project and highly recommend it.

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.

In addition to Java, you need to know about the Java ecosystem.

Each chapter covers a type of tool like version control, securing binaries, or mobile. Some chapters cover a variety of tools. I particularly liked the overview of Quarkus and Micronaut. I also liked the emphasis of tools vs a role. The analogies were great such as comparing identify/fix/deploy to an oil spill.

The book is 300 pages and easy to carry around. Despite having four authors, the book is very cohesive and reads well.

The importance of Extreme Programming can’t be overstated.

Kent Beck created one of the few Agile methods that captured not just a process for managing work, but a set of practices that would keep your software manageable in the long run. Shortly after this book was published, the Agile Manifesto was created.

You might say, “the rest is history”, except the industry lost its way for a decade. Extreme Programming was revived in Dave Farley and Jez Humble’s Continuous Delivery – now a vital part of DevOps. The State of DevOps report has validated at least half of the Extreme Programming practices, and Continuous Delivery brings it to the fore once more.