A novel about DevOps that is way more compelling than you expect. Anyone who has worked in software will recognize themselves, their organization, and their colleagues in this story. And, hopefully, they will also be intrigued by the counterintuitive solutions.

When you’ve only got so much runway and you need to find a product market fit as soon as possible, the lean startup methodology is the benchmark. This book is filled with good advice for quickly iterating, learning, measuring, and adapting products to find the right problem and the right solution.

A pandemic era book on good practices for shifting a company to a work from home culture, and all the possibilities for productivity and human thriving that comes with a new era of peril and possibilities. A must read for leaders of hybrid and fully remote organizations.

Follow the journey of a rag-tag team of driven (maybe mad) computer engineers as they race to build a next generation computer that will save their company and prove a point.

The Heath brothers offer up a simple framework for developing powerful messages that stick. And they back it up with concrete examples, evidence, and argument that will change the way you think about story telling.

Thank you to Kate Einerson for recommending this gem that walks us through the whole history of design, and effortlessly leaps from concrete practice, to theoretical frameworks, and deeply philosophical questions about the value and impact of user friendly design.

A rough and ready introduction to a handful of powerful techniques for forecasting work in an agile environment. There’s no panacea here, but if you read and absorb the ideas, and practice the techniques, you will start to see new possibilities in your work. Best insight from the book? “A forecast is not a date, it’s a shape.”

Pithy, concise, and straightforward introduction to tech product management. Cagan is not the final word on all of the topics in this book, but he should probably be the starting point. Best takeaway? “Hire missionaries, not mercenaries.”

A riveting introduction to the ideas of complexity, how it shows up in technological organizations and societies, and a number of useful framework and tools for conceptualizing and addressing the problems that it can generate. A must read for anyone who’s ever worked with a system that could act in surprising ways.

An, at times, disturbing account of how human behavior can be and has been hacked and manipulated through clever use of qualitative and quantitative methods to drive user adoption of software systems. There are good ideas and techniques here, but not enough consideration given to the ethics of deploying them. This is one of the places where the idea of “North Start Metric” was popularized, which is a great idea, if you’ve found the right metric.

Recommended to me by my practice lead at NYSTEC, Johan Hari tells a personal story that touches on some of the most challenging aspects of a modern technophile society, what we’ve gained, what we’ve lost, and tactics for reclaiming our time and our minds for deep thought and work.

An essential guide to anyone who writes or reads user stories. Mike Cohn’s approach is simple, easily executable, and memorable. Time and time again I find myself referring back to his timeless aphorism: “A card is a conversation”.

An incredibly readable introduction to the ideas of functional programming, that made me appreciate the practice of coding at a whole new level. There are many right ways to code, but the framework of data, calculations, and actions is powerful tool for making good design decisions. The ideas in this book are useful well beyond the domain of programming, and resonate well with agile and lean practices.

A valuable framework for anyone who understands the value of good, direct professional feedback, and also cares about people. I could have done with less name dropping, and fewer anecdotes. But they are easy to skip and gloss over, and don’t undermine the central thesis - which remains valuable.

The canonical textbook for business analysts and anyone who carries on analytical work on software systems. It’s not exactly a page turner, but you will not find a better collection of tools, techniques, knowledge areas, and ideas for organizing software systems analysis anywhere - an underrated gem in a product world that is highly focused on frameworks.