anya-alexa/devops-readme.md

What to Read to Learn More About DevOps

DevOps README.md

The Phoenix Project

• Novel; Not your typical technical book
• Transformation of Broken Organization towards DevOps Culture
• Quintessential beginning of a DevOps journey
• Pros: Easy to digest, can suggest to executives
• Cons: The implementation details are fuzzy
• Quip: We all know Brent. Help Brent not be Brent.
• URL: https://itrevolution.com/book/the-phoenix-project/

The DevOps Handbook

• Handbook full of use cases and helpful examples
• Years of experience poured into one book
• The next step of a DevOps journey
• Pros: Detail oriented, can give to technical staff
• Cons: Not a quick read
• Quip: You're DevOps'ing if you quote this book.
• URL: https://itrevolution.com/book/the-devops-handbook/

The Twelve-Factor App

• https://12factor.net/
• De facto standard for implementing software
• Good design principles for refactors and green field
• Pros: Free; Up-to-date; Roadmap
• Cons: State has to exist somewhere; lightly addressed
• Quip: If apps only had 12 factors...

Release It!

• Developer centric cases and examples for releasing
• First edition out of print; second edition in December
• Technical af
• Pros: Looks at the SDLC holistically
• Cons: Not readily available yet
• Quip: Interesting that Release It! Isn't released yet.
• URL: https://pragprog.com/book/mnee/release-it

Continuous Delivery

• Provides focus for deploying software faster
• Emphasizes automation (you must automate first)
• When John Willis says "shift left" he's talking about executing earlier in pipelines described in this book
• Pros: Clear, real-world
• Cons: Sometimes redundant, slightly dated
• Quip: CD for your CTO to improve ROI and EBITDA.
• URL: http://www.informit.com/store/continuous-delivery-reliable-software-releases-through-9780321601919

Site Reliability Engineering

• A collection of essays from Google SREs about how things are done at Google
• A fantastic reference for various functions like on-call, onboarding, delivery, etc.
• Pros: Free; solid examples of how to do things
• Cons: You are not Google; embrace with caution
• Quip: Google SRE is proof setting a pile of money on fire is a viable solution to engineering problems.
• URL: https://landing.google.com/sre/

The Art of Monitoring

• Opinionated HOWTO implementation guide to
monitoring at scale
• Incredibly thorough book
• Pros: Explicit; Detailed
• Cons: Opinionated; Long; Perhaps too specific
• Quip: If a book's art worthiness is measured by weight then we have a winner (767 pages).
• URL: https://www.artofmonitoring.com/

Effective DevOps

• Culture centric focus on DevOps
• Discusses collaboration, hiring, team building, etc.
• Great for leaders and managers
• Touches on a wide variety of important topics
• Pros: Culture is hard; this helps
• Cons: Etsy probably isn't the best example anymore
• Quip: Effectiveness is a good thing!
• URL: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920039846.do

Enterprise DevOps Playbook

• Roadmap for building a successful DevOps org
• Addresses hiring, culture, and learning
• Pros: Suggests tuning in your current organization
• Cons: Missing some pieces to the puzzle
• Quip: Yes! Enterprise and DevOps can work together... Somehow.
• URL: http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/enterprise-devops-playbook.csp

The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change

• Community-produced companion to Jim Whitehurst's 2015 book, The Open Organization
• Like SRE book, a collection of essays
• Focus on principles and practices of culture
• Pros: Easy to read; diverse authors; inspirational
• Cons: Not all pieces apply to everyone
• Quip: "Being positive is sometimes difficult to do." I wrote that? Wow. I had no idea.
• URL: https://opensource.com/open-organization/17/6/open-org-it-culture-now-available

Lean Enterprise

• Big picture, business minded change agent
• All phase guide to planning, organizing,
implementation, and measurement
• Great for leaders and managers
• Pros: Mindset changing readiness guide
• Cons: None given the scope
• Quip: This is not a weight loss book... Or is it?
• URL: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030355.do

Beyond Blame

• Failure happens; Beyond Blame is a HOWTO in
making postmortems blameless
• Great for individual contributors, leaders, managers
• Pros: Guides you towards blamelessness
• Cons: Emotions are hard, this isn't a psychiatrist
• Quip: I blame this book for your blame problems.
• URL: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033981.do

How Complex Systems Fail

• "Post-accident attribution accident to a 'root cause' is fundamentally wrong"
• Re-thinking failure in our systems makes them more robust
• Pros: Makes case that RCA isn't a solid process
• Cons: None given the scope
• Quip: You're human so you're the problem.
• URL: https://cdn.chrisshort.net/How-Complex-Systems-Fail.pdf

In Search of Certainty

• Foundation shaking look at future
• Great for individual contributors, leaders, managers
• Pros: Helps manage a world we don't know
• Cons: Slightly terrifying
• Quip: Death, taxes, and PagerDuty are the only certainties in life.
• URL: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920038542.do

The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

• Stress isn't all bad if we learn how to manage it
• Stress can actually make us happier
• Pros: Teaches life improving skills
• Cons: None given the scope
• TED Talk: How to make stress your friend
• Quip: If stress is good for me I'm going to live forever.
• URL: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1583335617/

The End of Heaven: Disaster and Suffering in a Scientific Age

• Slightly controversial take on disaster in modern times
• Recommended to me by John Willis
• Pros: Makes you rethink your feelings
• Cons: Slightly controversial
• URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-End-of-Heaven-Disaster-and-Suffering-in-a-Scientific-Age/Dekker/p/book/9780415789875

The Art of War

• In DevOps you SHOULD NOT have adversaries
• I am willing to bet that anyone worth their salt has
read this though
• Tactics from this work should be used sensibly
• "Know thy enemy"
• Pros: Well known work studied in business, military
• Cons: Not an easy read; multiple differing translations
• URL: http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

"You are either building a learning organization or you will be losing to someone who is." --Andrew Clay Shafer