Recommended Reading

Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble and Gene Kim Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps, IT Revolution Press, 2018
Another great book from these giants of DevOps

Mark Schwartz a Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, IT Revolution Press, 2017
How to move IT from an order-taking function to a strategic driver of business performance

Kim, Gene, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, & John Willis The DevOps Handbook, IT Revolution Press, 2016
The best "how-to" book for DevOps. Outlines the Three Ways: Flow, Feedback, and Learning

Choudary, Sangeet Paul and Marshall W. Van Alstyne Platform Revolution, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016
Why the biggest digital companies are platform companies and how they think differently.

Sierra, Kathy. Badass: Making Users Awesome, O'Reilly Media, 2015
A really good book about designing great products - and the book practices what it preaches.

Newman, Sam. Building Microservices, O'Reilly Media, 2015
Architecture for the cloud: A really good summary of what microsdrvices are all about

Humble, Jez, Joanne Molesky and Barry O'Reilly. Lean Enterprise, O'Reilly Media, 2015
The best current thinking about how to create great software-intensive products and services

Raskino, Mark and Graham Walle Digital to the Core, Routledge, 2015
Why digital must move out of the IT department and become part of the core business.

Poppendieck, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. The Lean Mindset, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2014
Rethink the way you think about work - especially if you work with software-intensive products or services.

Gregory, Janet, and Lisa Crispin. More Agile Testing, Addison Wesley, 2014
This is a book for the whole team, not just for testing.

Patton, Jeff. User Story Mapping, O'Reilly Media, 2014
Look at the customer journey to understand the whole story and build the right product

Morieux, Yves and Peter Tollman. Six Simple Rules, Harvard Business Review Press, 2014
How to manage complexity from the perspective of the people being managed

Kim, Gene, Kevin Behr and George Spafford. The Phoenix Project, IT Revolution Press, 2013
A Novel about IT and DevOps - A modern version of Goldratt's "The Goal"

Hendrickson, Elisabeth. Explore it!, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2013
Everything you need to know about exploratory testing.

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Decisive, Crown Business, 2013
A great, highly readable summary of the latest research on decision making.

Modig, Niklas, and Par Ahlstrom. This is Lean, Stockholm: Rheologica Publishing, 2012
One of the best book on Lean we have seen. Learn why flow efficiency trumps resource efficiency.

Adzic, Gojko. Impact Mapping, Woking, UK: Provoking Thoughts, 2012
How to use impact maps to clarify Why? Who? How? and What?

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
Summarizes the reserach behind cognitive biases.

Kniberg, Henrik. Lean from the Trenches,Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2011
MUST READ! The best HOW-TO book out there.

Adzic, Gojko. Specification by Example, Manning Publications, 2011
In-depth case studies of how teams automate specifications and regression.

Ries, Eric The Lean Startup, Crown Business, 2011
This book changes the discussion from software development to business imperatives.

Appelo, Jurgen. Management 3.0, Addison Wesley Professional, 2011
A great collection of ideas on how to manage agile teams.

Moore, Geoffrey. Escape Velocity, Harper Business, 2011
How to escape the Innovators Dilemma.

Reichheld, Fred. The Ultimate Question 2.0, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011
Everything you need to know about the New Promoter Score.

Anderson, David. Kanban, Blue Hole Press, 2010
If you want to know how to do Kanban, this is the book to get.

Heath, Chip and Dan. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Crown Business, 2010
How to sell ideas and change things when you have no power.

Humble, Jez and David Farley. Continuous Delivery, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010
How build, test, and deployment automation bridge the Development-Operations chasm.

Spear, Steven. The High Velocity Edge, McGraw Hill, 2nd Edition, 2010 (First Edition titled Chasing the Rabbit, 2008)
How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Bogsnes, Bjarte. Implementing Beyond Budgeting, Wiley, 2009
Agile ideas from the executive suite for the executive suite.

Crispin, Lisa and Janet Gregory. Agile Testing, Addison Wesley, 2009
Broad and in-depth coverage of how to move testing to the front of the development process.

Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto, Picador, 2009
It's simple. It's cheap. It's proven to be incredibly effective. So why don't we use it?

Klein, Gary. Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making, MIT Press, 2009
THE definitive work on how experts make decisions.

Pink, Daniel. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Riverhead Books, 2009
An excellent book! All you really need to know about motivation.

Poppendieck, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Leading Lean Software Development, Addison Wesley, 2009
For Leaders of Software-Intensive System Development.

Reinertsen, Donald G. Principles of Product Development Flow, Celeritas Publishing, 2009
An excellent book on lean product development.

Rother, Mike. Toyota Kata, McGraw-Hill, 2009
How Toyota does Relentless Improvement.

Beck, Kent. Implementation Patterns, Addison-Wesley, 2008
Thinking tools for creating great code.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers, Little, Brown and Company, 2008
This is a fascinating book about how culture and chance combine with hard work to create amazing success.

Kennedy, Michael N., Kent Harmon, and Ed Minnock. Ready, Set, Dominate, Oakela Press, 2008
Implement Toyota's Set-based Learning for Developing Products and Nobody Can Catch You. RECOMMENDED!

Martin, Bob. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Prentice Hall, 2008
What simple, clean code is, why you need it, and how to do it. Every developer should read this book.

Parker, James. Do the Right Thing: How Dedicated Employees Create Loyal Customers and Large Profits, Pearson Education, 2008
A GREAT book on leadeship.

Shook, John. Managing to Learn, Lean Enterprise Institute, 2008
Using the A3 management process to solve problems, gain agreements, mentor, and lead. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Sobek, Durward and Art Smalley. Understanding A3 Thinking, Productivity Press, 2008
An excellent toolbox for those who are looking for those who are sharpening their focus on relentless improvement.

Kniberg, Henrik. Scrum and XP from the Trenches, InfoQ, 2007
An immensely practical guide to getting started with agile.

Meszaros, Gerard. xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code, Addison-Wesley, 2007
Tests are software too. But they have their own set of patterns, and this book is the insiders guide.

Nygard, Michael. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software, Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2007
If your code has to stand up to relentless stress in a production environment, this book is required reading.

Pfeffer, Jeffery. What Where They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management, Harvard Business School Press, 2007
Any book by Jeffery Pfeffer is always full of a lot of wisdom.

Ward, Allen. Lean Product and Process Development, Lean Enterprise Institute, 2007
A deep look at how Toyota develops products, with critical guidance on how to apply lean to a development environment. RECOMMENDED!

Flinchbaugh, Jamie and Andy Carlino. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, 2006
A really good basic introduction to lean thinking.

May, Matthew. The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation, Free Press, 2006
A look at the culture driving the innovations in both manufacturing and product design at Toyota.

Pfeffer, Jeffery and Robert Sutton. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Business School Press, 2006
A wonderful book about how some of the most unassailable management wisdom is clearly wrong - based on the evidence.

Poppendieck, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Implementing Lean Software Development, Addison Wesley, 2006
The sequel to Lean Software Development.

Cohn, Mike. Agile Estimating and Planning, Addison-Wesley, 2005
So you want to be agile and want to know what happens to planning? Read this!

Feathers, Michael. Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Addison-Wesley, 2005
If you are working with Legacy Code, GET THIS BOOK!.

Mugridge, Rick and Ward Cunningham. FIT for Developing Software, Addison-Wesley, 2005
Anyone doing automated acceptance testing, including retrofitting legacy code with acceptance tests, should READ THIS.

Seddon, John. Freedom From Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service, Productivity Press, 2005
Systems thinking for any organization that provides a service.

Surowiecki, Jim. The Wisdom of Crowds, Anchor, 2005
How it is that all of us make better decisions than any of us.

Zeller, Andreas. Why Programs Fail: Systematic Debugging, Morgan Kaufmann, 2005
How to gain design knowledge by finding and fixing defects that escape into production.

Cohn, Mike. User Stories Applied, Addison-Wesley, 2004
The details about how to use stories to drive your development process.

Denne, Mark and Jane Cleland-Huang. Software by Numbers, Prentice Hall, 2004
This book shows how to benefit from staged deployment based on economic analysis. Provides solid financial justification for agile development.

Kerievsky, Joshua. Refactoring to Patterns, Addison-Wesley, 2004
The best how-to guide on refactoring.

Beck, Kent and Cynthia Andres Extreme Programming Explained, Second Edition Addison-Wesley, 2004
The second edition is a completely new book, and it's great.

Schwaber, Ken. Agile Project Management with SCRUM, Microsoft Press, 2004
A book filled with case studies and down-to-earth tips about how to do Scrum.

Evans, Eric. Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, Addison Wesley, 2003
An extremely important book - proposes that domain understanding is at the heart of great software design, and shows how to do it..

Hope, Jeremy and Robin Fraser. Beyond Budgeting, Harvard Business School Press, 2003
Agile ideas from the executive suite for the executive suite. The book that started the movement.

Kennedy, Michael N. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise, Oakela Press, 2003
If you want to know how the company that invented Lean (Toyota) does product development, this is the book to read.

Astels, David. Test-Driven Development, Prentice Hall, 2003
Award-winning book. This is the book to get if you are implementing test-driven development.

Austin, Rob and Lee Devin. Artful Making, Prentice Hall, 2003
A play comes together on opening night, no matter what. With the same philosophy, software can come together on time, every time.

Poppendieck, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Lean Software Development, Addison Wesley, 2003
If you have a lean initiative in your company and you do software development, you should read this book.

Scholtes, Peter, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel. The Team Handbook, Joiner/Oriel, Third edition, 2003
A classic on applying Deming's ideas: the team perspective. Tools for making team improvement efforts highly effective.

Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking, Simon & Schuster, 1996; Second Edition, Free Press, 2003
For almost a decade, this was the best book on Lean. The revised edition remains a classic.

Cockburn, Alistair. Writing Effective Use Cases, Addison-Wesley, 2001
The classic book on writing use cases, and still the best one on the subject.

Collins, James C. Good to Great, Harper Business, 2001
The five basis for creating great organizations: a great book.

Schwaber, Ken and Mike Beedle. Agile Software Development with SCRUM, Prentice Hall, 2001
The book to read for an introduction to Scrum.

Weick, Karl and Kathleen Sutcliffe. Managing the Unexpected; Assuring High Performance in the Age of Complexity, Jossey-Bass, 2001
A fascinating book about what makes very dangerous places safe: aircraft carriers, chemical plants, emergency scenes.

Dyer, Jeffrey H. Collaborative Advantage: Winning Through Extended Enterprise Supplier Networks, Oxford University Press, 2000
The economic rationale behind collaborative relationships with suppliers. Good background for establishing a contracting philosophy.

Freedman, David H. Corps Business; The 30 Management Principles of the U. S. Marines, Harper Business, 2000
A great book on leadership, management, and bringing out the best in front line workers.

Beck, Kent. Extreme Programming Explained, Addison-Wesley, 2000
The book on XP that started it all.

Constantine, Larry and Lucy Lockwood. Software for Use, Addison-Wesley, 1999
The authoritative book on usage-centered design.

Scholtes, Peter. The Leader's Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1998
A classic on applying Deming's ideas: the management perspective. RECOMMENDED!

Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator's Dilemma, Harvard Business School Press, 1997
A great book on how disruptive technologies displace market leaders almost every time.

Reinertsen, Donald G. Managing the Design Factory, The Free Press, New York, 1997
An excellent book on lean product development.

Austi15, Rob. Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations, Dorset House, 1996
You get what you measure, but you can't measure everything, so what should you do? One of the best books on performance measurement we've seen.

Clark, Kim B. and Takahiro Fujimoto. Product Development Performance, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1991
Shows how the key to product integrity is information flow, from the market to the technical team, and among all members of the technical team.

Smith, Preston G. and Donald G. Reinertsen. Developing Products in Half the Time, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1998, originally published in 1991
Still the classic on rapid product development.

Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. The Machine That Changed the World; the Story of Lean Production, Rawson & Associates, 1990
The classic book with the sub-title that gave Lean its name.

Goldratt, Eliyahu and Jeff Cox. The Goal, 2nd Revised Edition, North River Press, 1992, originally published in 1984
If you haven't read this business novel on the Theory of Constraints applied to manufacturing, you've missed a classic.

Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System, English, Productivity, Inc. 1988, published in Japanese in 1978
A MUST READ book by the Father of the Toyota Production System. Easy to read, engaging, and profound.

Brooks, Frederick. The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition, Addison Wesley, 1995, originally published in 1975
A classic that has stood the test of time. It shows how little things have changed in 30 years.

Sapolsky, Harvey M. The Polaris System Development, Harvard University Press, 1972
An out-of-print book about a stunningly successful large system development project. Although PERT was invented for this project, it had little to do with the program's success.The real reasons for Polaris's success reads like a textbook case of applying Lean principles to large projects.