In my career, I have read many books on software development and engineering, but few have impressed me as much as Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. This book is a comprehensive guide to building high-performing teams in software engineering, and it provides valuable insights into the key practices and principles that drive success.
“Accelerate is the definitive guide to building high-performing technology organizations, and I recommend it to every business and technical leader who wants to achieve success in the digital age.” – Laszlo Bock, CEO and co-founder of Humu
“Accelerate is a must-read for any organization that wants to improve its software delivery performance.” – Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI at Microsoft
“Accelerate is an incredible book that outlines a clear path to improving software delivery performance through the adoption of DevOps practices.” – John Willis, Senior Director of Global Transformation Office at Red Hat
These quotes demonstrate the impact that Accelerate has had on the tech industry and highlight the value that it provides to organizations that are looking to improve their software delivery performance.
One of the key themes of Accelerate is the importance of continuous delivery. The authors argue that organizations that are able to deliver new software features and updates quickly and reliably have a significant competitive advantage. To achieve this, they recommend a number of practices, such as:
- Using version control for all production artifacts
- Automating the build, test, and deployment process
- Implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery
- Monitoring application and infrastructure performance
- Building a culture of experimentation and learning
By following these practices, organizations can accelerate their software delivery process, reduce lead times, and increase the frequency of deployments. This, in turn, allows them to respond more quickly to changes in the market, and to deliver better value to their customers.
Another key theme of Accelerate is the importance of measurement. The authors argue that in order to improve software delivery performance, organizations must first measure it. They identify four key metrics that are strongly correlated with high performance:
- Lead time for changes: This measures the time it takes to go from code commit to production deployment.
- Deployment frequency: This measures how frequently organizations are deploying changes to production.
- Time to restore service: This measures how long it takes to recover from a service outage or other incident.
- Change failure rate: This measures how frequently changes to the system result in service outages or other incidents.
By measuring these metrics, organizations can gain insight into their software delivery performance, and identify areas where they can improve.
Overall, Accelerate is an outstanding book that provides a wealth of practical advice and guidance for software engineers, managers, and executives. The authors draw on a large body of research and practical experience to provide a solid foundation for the practices and principles that are recommended in the book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in building high-performing teams in software engineering.
“This is the kind of foresight that CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs 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 who has.”
— Thomas A. Limoncelli, coauthor of The Practice of Cloud System Administration
