This week, we’re celebrating Book Lover’s Day. Whether you’ve been lucky enough to hit the beach or you’re taking the time to unwind at home, reading is a great way to learn, relax and improve focus. And what better way to spend your downtime than with some top tech books?
If you haven’t already read the suggestions below, we’d highly recommend these brilliant books to help sharpen your knowledge around tech business.
by Matthew Skelton (Author), Manuel Pais (Author)
First up, we have Team Topologies, co-authored by Matthew Skelton from Leeds, England and Manual Pais reigning from Madrid in Spain. Check out this summary from Goodreads:
“Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.”
Matthew is the Head of Consulting at a company called Conflux, which he founded in 2017. Here, he specialises in a wide range of areas – IoT, cloud, ecommerce, online services, continuous delivery, operability, organisation dynamics for software and embedded software to name just a few. Known as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, his other books, including Team Guide to Software Operability and Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET are well worth a read.
Co-author Manuel Pais, on the other hand, started the Team Topologies Academy to help organisations scale learning around modern team dynamics and fast flow. Recognised as a DevOps thought leader, he is an independent trainer and consultant focused on team interactions, accelerating flow and improving delivery practices.
There is a wealth of practical experience behind this book and answers to plenty of the big questions. Pick up a copy of Team Topologies if you want to learn how to build the best team organisation for your specific goals, culture and needs.
by Reid Hoffman (Author), Ben Casnocha (Author), Chris Yeh (Author)
In The Alliance, a trio of authors steps in to explain how to manage talent in the networked age. Goodreads summarises the book:
“By putting this new alliance at the heart of your talent management strategy, you’ll not only bring back trust, you’ll be able to recruit and retain the entrepreneurial individuals you need to adapt to a fast-changing world.”
Reid, residing in California, USA, brings a breadth of expertise in everything from consumer internet and software, innovation, business strategy, operations, talent management, marketing and business development, through to product development, finance, general management and business operations. It’s no surprise that he’s published multiple books on those subjects, including the likes of The Start-Up of You, Masters of Scale and Blitzscaling.
Ben Casnocha is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, venture capitalist, executive and author. He’s a co-founding partner at Village Global, a venture capital firm backed by some of the world's most successful tech entrepreneurs (including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates) and as such has an eye for founders around the world who are redefining the software and IT industry. He is also a co-author of The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself alongside Reid Hoffman.
Last but not least, Chris Yeh, who has spent his entire working career at high-tech startups. He has experience in market research, product marketing, entrepreneurship, product management, sales management, online advertising, online marketing and general management. Chris believes in a new and realistic pact between employer and employee – a view shared by all three co-authors, as demonstrated through this book.
by Gene Kim (Author), Kevin Behr (Author), George Spafford (Author)
Last but by no means least is The Phoenix Project, all about IT, DevOps and how to make your business win. Goodreads sums it up perfectly with this paragraph:
“In a fast-paced and entertaining style, three luminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in IT will recognize. Readers will not only learn how to improve their own IT organizations, they'll never view IT the same way again.”
Gene Kim, from Portland, Oregon, is a multiple award-winning CTO, researcher and author, who has completed four books including The Phoenix Project and The DevOps Handbook. Both are the result of over 13 years of research in both low-performing and high-performing IT organisations, so co-author Kim is certainly credible – a claim backed up by his place on ComputerWorld’s “40 Innovative IT People to Watch Under the Age of 40” list.
Kevin Behr, a trusted mentor and advisor to CEOs and CIOs the world over, has over 30 years of IT management experience and brings it to the fold in this educational book. He focuses on three areas specifically: enterprise services design, OpsFlow techniques and sustained organisational design. Other than The Phoenix Project he has authored several other IT management books – Visible Ops Handbook is another of his books well worth a mention.
Finally, George Spafford is a VP Analyst with Gartner, who has experience as a practitioner in IT operations and business for over 20 years. Known as a prolific author and speaker, he has consulted and conducted training on regulatory compliance, IT governance and process improvement with other books such as Visible Ops Security.
You’ll find links to the books we’ve mentioned here throughout the blog post. So, what will you be putting in a bag this summer? If you can suggest any books that are well worth reading, feel free to do so in the comments below.
