Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim

Overview

"We strongly recommend this book to anyone involved in a digital transformation for solid guidance about what works, what doesn’t work, and what doesn’t matter." —Tom and Mary Poppendieck, authors of the Lean Software Development Series "A must-read! In a sea of books about technology approaches, Accelerate stands out in its clarity and practicality." —Karen Martin, author of Clarity First and The Outstanding Organization Winner of the Shingo Publication AwardAccelerate your organization to win in the marketplace.How can we apply technology to drive business value? For years, we've been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn't matter―that it can't provide a competitive advantage to our companies. 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. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance. This book is ideal for management at every level."This is the kind of foresight that CE's, CF's, and CI's desperately need if their company is going to survive in this new software-centric world. Anyone that doesn't read this book will be replaced by someone that has." —Thomas A. Limoncelli, coauthor of The Practice of Cloud System Administration

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942788331
Publisher:	IT Revolution Press
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	161,551
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dr. Nicole Forsgren does research and strategy at Google Cloud following the acquisition of her startup DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) by Google. She is best known for her work measuring the technology process and as the lead investigator on the largest DevOps studies to date. She has been an entrepreneur, professor, sysadmin, and performance engineer. Nicole’s work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. Nicole earned her PhD in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona, and is a Research Affiliate at Clemson University and Florida International University. She lives in San Francisco, CA. Jez Humble is co-author of The DevOps Handbook, Lean Enterprise, and the Jolt Award-winning Continuous Delivery. He is currently researching how to build high performing teams at his startup, DevOps Research and Assessment, LLC, and teaching at UC Berkeley. He lives in California. Gene Kim is a multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and co-author of The Phoenix Project, Beyond The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and The Visible Ops Handbook. He is founder of IT Revolution, hosts the DevOps Enterprise Summit conferences, and speaks around the world. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife and children.

Table of Contents

Foreword Martin Fowler xi

Foreword Courtney Kissler xv

Quick Reference: Capabilities to Drive Improvement xix

Preface xxi

Part I What We Found

1 Accelerate 3

2 Measuring Performance 11

3 Measuring and Changing Culture 29

4 Technical Practices 41

5 Architecture 59

6 Integrating Infosec into the Delivery Lifecycle 69

7 Management Practices for Software 75

8 Product Development 83

9 Making Work Sustainable 89

10 Employee Satisfaction, Identity, and Engagement 101

11 Leaders and Managers 115

Part II The Research

12 The Science Behind This Book 131

13 Introduction to Psychometrics 143

14 Why Use a Survey 157

15 The Data for the Project 169

Part III Transformation

16 High-Performance Leadership and Management 179

Conclusion 199

Appendix A Capabilities to Drive Improvement 201

Appendix B The Stats 211

Appendix C Statistical Methods Used in Our Research 223

Acknowledgments 231

Bibliography 237

Index 243

About the Authors 257

Editorial Reviews

"The 'art' of constructing a building is a well understood engineering practice nowadays. However, in the software world, we have been been looking for patterns and practices that can deliver the same predictable and reliable results whilst minimizing waste and producing the increasingly high performance our businesses demand. Accelerate provides research backed, quantifiable and real world principles to create world class, high performing IT teams enabling amazing business outcomes. Backed by the two leading thought leaders (Kim and Humble) in the DevOps community and world class research from PHD Forsgren, this book is a highly recommended asset!"

Jonathan Fletcher

'Here, do this!' The evidence presented in Accelerate is a triumph of research, tenacity and insight, proving not just correlation but a causal link between good technical and management behaviours and business performance. It also exposes the myth of “maturity models” and offers a realistic, actionable alternative. As an independent consultant working at the intersection of people, technology, process, and organisation design this is manna from heaven! As chapter 3 concludes: 'You can act your way to a better culture through implementing these practices in technology organizations'. There is no mystical culture magic, just 24 concrete, specific capabilities that will lead not only to better business results, but more importantly to happier, healthier, more motivated people and an organisation people want to work at. I will be giving copies of this book to all my clients."

Dan North

"A must read! In a sea of books about technology approaches, Accelerate stands out in its clarity and practicality."

Karen Martin

"Accelerate does a fantastic job of explaining not only what changes organizations should make to improve their software delivery performance, but also the why, enabling people at all levels to truly understand how to level up their organizations."

Ryn Daniels

"With this work, the authors have made a significant contribution to the understanding and application of DevOps. They show that when properly understood, DevOps is more than just a fad or a new name for an old concept. Their work illustrates how DevOps can improve the state of the art in organizational design, software development culture, and systems architecture. And beyond merely showing, they advance the DevOps community's qualitative findings with research-based insights that I have heard from no other source."

Baron Schwartz

"In their book Accelerate, Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim don’t break any new conceptual ground regarding agile, lean and DevOps. Instead, they provide something that might be even more valuable which is a look inside the methodological rigor of their data collection and analysis approach which lead them to their earlier conclusions on the key capabilities that make IT organizations better contributors to the business. This is a book that I will gladly be placing on my bookshelf next to the other great works by the authors."

Cameron Haight

"This is the kind of foresight that CE's, CF's, and CI's desperately need if their company is going to survive in this new software-centric world. Anyone that doesn't read this book will be replaced by someone that has."

Thomas A. Limoncelli

"Excellent! As well as conclusively showing that DevOps outcomes are faster, cheaper AND safer, this book is an excellent case study for robust survey design and analysis."

Adrian Cockroft

"We strongly recommend this book to anyone involved in a digital transformation for solid guidance about what works, what doesn’t work, and what doesn’t matter."

Tom & Mary Poppendieck