Tech book must reads
There are few things that match listening to the narrative of smart people. Here is a list of books that made a huge difference to how I think.
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
Set in the form of a novel, I love this book because it’s characters keep turning up in my life, especially the IT hero with superpowers who saves the enterprise during an outage, I’ve played that character and it’s a huge buzz to resuscitate a critical business service - but the enterprise needs engineering and not ego.
There is one passage that hat blew my mind, it discusses wait times and come up with the formula ( wait time = (% Busy)/(% Idle)), while based on software development, the principle holds true for most IT requests, so to improve lead time, we need to control/balance the amount of assigned tasks with the capacity (idle time) to process.
The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
The follow on to ‘The Phoenix Project’, it elaborates on the ‘three ways’: Flow, Feedback and Continuous Improvement, and explains how lean Manufacturing principles apply to the technology value stream. There is so much in this book, I’m shocked so many who work in the industry have not read it.*
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones
This should be taught as a 101 for anyone entering the industry, how can anyone think they cannot learn from how Google build and operate their own systems. The only problem with reading this book is you are going to be frustrated the rest of your working life with those who don’t take an engineering mindset to running production systems at scale.
The Power of Habit
Charles Duhigg
If you have read the three books already mentioned you already realize that people are one of the big problems in technology, especially refusal to change the way they have always done something. Hence this is a must read for IT managers and leaders who want to drive transformation. This isn`t a technology book, but it does cover the role habits play in organizations, social movements, and individuals.
Between the neuroscience are great anecdotes that make it one of the best and most enjoyable books I’ve read.
The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right
Atul Gawande
Humans are frequently the cause behind outages, when environments are complex and many steps are needed checklists are and huge help. This book convinced me of what I already suspected. Its not just about writing down the steps of a process, but the culture change and collaboration that makes individual specialists put ego aside and work together.
How the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil
Less tech and more about understanding energy dependancy of industries such as food production, manufacturing and transportation. Bill Gates said the first three chapters should be required reading for anyone who wants to have an informed opinion on climate change.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
Cal Newport
Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive
Charles Duhigg