DevOps, roughly speaking, seeks to get IT workers to interact with each other more – particularly when they are in different functional roles. Authors Humble and Kim have led this movement and pioneered annual studies to ascertain its progress among practitioners of technology. In this book, they team together with Forsgren (a PhD who brings a rigorous knowledge of statistics and data collection to the table) to present their findings and explain their methods.

IT professionals are notorious for trusting what a computer says over what their fellow humans say – even when the computational figures can be shown as inaccurate. They tend to distrust “subjective” surveys (even the most rigorous) over “objective” data sources. In this work, Forsgren runs head-first against that prevailing wind to sail cleanly into the harbor of first-rate technology organizations.

In this work, these three authors share what to look for in high-performing organizations with technology centers. They distinguish those from characteristics of other clusters with mid-level or low performance. In an ever-changing, competitive tech environment, these findings, grounded in rigorous data collection and analysis, shine a light onto what to aspire towards in an IT group. Reading them can save needless experimentation as it confirms employees’ collective instincts as to the path forward.

Information technology is now central to our lives in modern societies. Thus, it is important to just about every major corporation (i.e., a “vertical”). Those who manage, work in, or interface with technology sectors can benefit from learning what a healthy tech workforce looks like. That is this book’s main audience. Researchers about, teachers of, and students in computer science serve as another market as these groups learn about what modern workplaces look like in the “real world.”

I’ve been a fan of the DevOps movement for a while now. I’ve worked in environments (academic research labs) that practice DevOps principles since 2001… well before the movement became organized. The ability to wear many hats and think through various functions just seems beneficial towards producing high-quality software. In recent years, Kim and Humble have articulated the foundations of this movement. In this book, Forsgren’s addition of grounding their theories in rigorous data analysis is welcomed and serves to transform the tech industry even further. ( )

Beeing in to the agile movement this is a great read! ( )

Uninspiring. Authors seem pretty concerned about explaining to you why their research uses valid methods (even including a whole section on statistics), rather than delving into the research that the title suggests the book would. Perhaps they felt they needed to prop up the research, because really all that's here are surveys with a biased sample selection and subsequent correlation investigations. I'm already on board with many of the things this book espouses, but I just couldn't get behind the way the authors approached it here. For a better treatment that doesn't try to obscure the fact that there still isn't really any true RCT-type research in this area, see Kim's earlier work [b:The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win|17255186|The Phoenix Project A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win|Gene Kim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361113128l/17255186._SX50_.jpg|23848838] -- a much more readable piece. ( )