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2023 Reads

Recoding America

- JENNIFER PAHLKA ‍

Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.

Recommended by:

BRYON KROGER, DUONG HANG, ROB MONROE, MATT NELSON

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

- MATTHEW SKELTON AND MANUEL PAIS ‍

Team Topologies offers a model for designing effective software teams, focusing on four team types and three interaction patterns to optimize delivery and software health. It guides organizations in evolving team structures and communication for improved software architecture and organizational growth.

Recommended by:

DUONG HANG, BRYON KROGER

Extreme Ownership

- JOCKO WILLINK AND LEIF BABIN ‍

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's "Extreme Ownership" details leadership lessons from their SEAL team's challenges in Ramadi, Iraq, emphasizing that leadership is crucial at all levels for success. They apply their combat experience to business, teaching leadership principles through Echelon Front to various industries. The book offers strategies like Decentralized Command and Leading Up the Chain, showing how to implement SEAL tactics in any organization to foster high-performance teams and achieve success.

Recommended by:

LLOYD EVANS, KIM CRIDER

Unreasonable Hospitality

- WILL GUIDARA ‍

Will Guidara elevated Eleven Madison Park to the world's top restaurant by merging radical reinvention with exceptional hospitality. He crafted unforgettable experiences, nurtured a culture of ownership among staff, and demonstrated how transformative hospitality can turn everyday transactions into remarkable encounters, advocating this approach for all businesses.

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Inspired

Marty Cagan’s Inspired is a go-to guide for product managers and teams striving to build products that customers love. Drawing on his experience at Silicon Valley giants, Cagan outlines how to structure high-performing product teams, validate ideas efficiently, and maintain a strong product vision. His insights help organizations move beyond feature factories and toward meaningful innovation.

Recommended by:

Martin Eriksson

Wiring a Winning Organization

- GENE KIM AND STEVE SPEAR ‍

Gene Kim and Dr. Steven J. Spear's "Wiring the Winning Organization" presents a new theory of organizational management based on extensive research. The book argues that excellence is achieved through mechanisms that slowify, simplify, and amplify problem-solving, moving it from high to low-risk zones. Through analysis of leading companies, it offers a practical guide for creating organizational excellence beyond traditional factors like vision or culture.

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Modern Software Engineering

- DAVE FARLEY ‍

David Farley's "Modern Software Engineering" offers a foundational approach to improve software quality and developer well-being. It emphasizes learning, exploration, and managing complexity through principles that enhance code quality and work satisfaction. Farley advocates for a scientific method in software development, focusing on incremental progress, empirical learning, and effective complexity management.

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The Lean Startup

- ERIC RIES ‍

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries advocates for a flexible, efficient approach to building startups under uncertainty, emphasizing rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and agile adaptation over traditional, rigid business plans. It draws from lean manufacturing to enhance creativity and capital efficiency, guiding entrepreneurs to discover viable business paths through continuous testing and learning.

Recommended by:

Barry O'Reilly, Rob Monroe

The Startup Way

- ERIC RIES ‍

Eric Ries expands on The Lean Startup principles in "The Startup Way," applying entrepreneurial techniques to all types of organizations for growth, innovation, and transformation. He shares insights from working with giants like GE, Amazon, and startups like Airbnb, presenting a management system for sustainable growth and impact across industries, making it a guide for modernizing organizations in the 21st century.

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Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

- MARTY CAGAIN AND CHRIS JONES ‍

EMPOWERED by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones focuses on leveraging team potential for innovation, emphasizing leadership's role in creating an environment for greatness. It provides leaders in product management, design, and engineering with tools to build empowered teams, distinct from typical feature teams, and guides on transforming organizations to foster problem-solving and innovation.

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User Story Mapping

- JEFF PATTON ‍

Jeff Patton's book on user story mapping offers a strategy for focusing software development teams on user needs over product features. It explains how story maps facilitate better discussions and a shared understanding of project goals. The guide covers the lifecycle of a story in Agile and Lean contexts, from opportunity to discovery and beyond, emphasizing continuous learning from the development process.

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Good Services

- LOU DOWNE ‍

Good Services introduces the essential principles of designing high-quality services, distinguishing between "good" and "bad" services based on user experience. It is a comprehensive guide for both practitioners and non-practitioners aiming to improve service delivery by focusing on the elements that ensure services meet user needs effectively.

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Project to Product

"Project to Product" by Dr. Mik Kersten introduces the Flow Framework to transition businesses from project-based models to product-centric approaches in the software-dominated era. Kersten argues that mastering software delivery is critical for companies to avoid becoming obsolete and to dominate in the 21st century. This book offers a strategic method for organizations to adapt and thrive amidst digital transformation, targeting leaders seeking to steer their companies towards innovation and sustained relevance.

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The DevOps Handbook

Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, and John Willis

Building on the lessons of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook provides a practical guide for implementing DevOps in organizations. It covers key principles like continuous integration, automated deployments, and organizational culture shifts that enable faster, safer, and more reliable software delivery. This book is an essential resource for anyone adopting DevOps practices.

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Books from Prodacity Speakers

Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama

- JANICE & JASON FRASER ‍

Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers theory alongside hands-on exercises, formulas, and frameworks that can all be adapted to real-life situations in both professional and personal contexts. The world around you might constantly be in flux, but you don’t have to be. With this book, you’ll be empowered to make efficient progress with less stress—every single day.

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Corporate Rebels - Make Work Fun

- PIM DE MORREE & JOOST MINNAAR ‍

With 85% of employees disengaged, 23% feeling burned out and 37% believing that their job makes no useful contribution to society, work as we know it today is simply not working. Drawing on Minnaar and De Morree’s visits to 100+ of the world’s most progressive organisations, this book gives direct evidence that you can make work enjoyable and rewarding, while boosting performance and success.

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The Value Flywheel Effect

- DAVID ANDERSON ‍

Using Wardley Mapping and other sense-making approaches, The Value Flywheel Effect helps organizations anticipate market changes and user needs. As the flywheel starts to turn, each small win builds momentum. This continuous momentum builds situational awareness, breaks new boundaries, and catapults companies to sustainable, long-term success.

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Making Work Visible

- DOMINCA DEGRANDIS ‍

Through simple solutions that make work visible, DeGrandis helps people round up the five thieves of time and take back their lives with time-saving solutions. Chock-full of exercises, takeaways, real-world examples, colorful diagrams, and an easy-going writing style, readers will quickly learn effective practices to create high-performing workflows within an organization.

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Hack Your Bureaucracy

- NICK SINAI & MARINA NITZE ‍

From local government to the White House, Harvard to the world of venture capital, Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai have taken on some of the world’s most challenging bureaucracies—and won. Now, they bring their years of experience to you, teaching you strategies anyone can use to improve your organization through their own stories and those of fellow bureaucracy hackers.

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Lean Enterprise

- JEZ HUMBLE, JOANNE MOLESKY, BARRY O'REILLY ‍

This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale and demonstrates why and how to apply these paradigms throughout your organization. Through case studies, you'll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance.

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Accelerate

- JEZ HUMBLE, GENE KIM, NICOLE FORSGREN ‍

Through four years of groundbreaking research to include data collected from the State of DevOps reports conducted with Puppet, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance―and what drives it―using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research, making the information accessible for readers to apply in their own organizations.

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