Here are 100 books that Peopleware fans have personally recommended if you like
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I boast a two-decade-long career in the software industry. Over the years, I have diligently honed my programming skills across a multitude of languages, including JavaScript, C++, Java, Ruby, and Clojure. Throughout my career, I have taken on various management roles, from Team Leader to VP of Engineering. No matter the role, the thing I have enjoyed the most is to make complex topics easy to understand.
This book fundamentally changed how I think about business processes and problem-solving. I was drawn into the story of a plant manager struggling to save his factory and found Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints incredibly insightful for me as a programmer inside a development team.
The narrative format made complex concepts easy to understand and apply. I learned to identify and address bottlenecks in any system, which has been invaluable in both professional and personal contexts. Despite being a business book, I found it engaging and applicable to my day-to-day challenges as a programmer.
*A Graphic Novel version of this title is now available: "The Goal: A Business Graphic Novel"
30th Anniversary Edition. Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by…
I would like to consider myself an experienced and successful designer, researcher, and educator. I'm an Associate Professor in Communication Design and the Head of Education for the School of Design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, where I've taught and researched for the last twenty years so I'm super passionate about this subject and love explaining how design works. Before joining academia, I worked internationally as a designer and creative director for numerous prestigious design and media organizations, including Philips, Time-Warner, Windmill Lane Pictures, and WPP in the UK, Ireland, USA, and Southeast Asia. Working in these different businesses and locations gave me a broad perspective on the role and importance of design.
This essential book by Don Norman does not need any more plugging, but it would be impossible to leave it out.
The book forms a brilliant introduction to User Experience Design by explaining how the design of everyday objects relies on an intuitive understanding of how they work. Once we translate this thinking from the physical to the digital world, we are halfway there as UX/UI designers.
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious,even liberating,book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The…
I'm a programmer and technical author at Octopus Deploy and I'm deeply interested in DevOps. Since the 1950s, people have been studying software delivery in search of better ways of working. We’ve seen many revolutions since Lincoln Labs first introduced us to phased delivery, with lightweight methods transforming how we wrote software at the turn of the century. My interest in DevOps goes beyond my enthusiasm for methods in general, because we now have a great body of research that adds to our empirical observations on the ways we work.
Before Agile and Lean had rocked the software development industry, William Deming was busy forging this new world of work.
Out of the Crisis is predominantly a management book, but it’s really the spark that started the lightweight movement in software delivery. A key concept in the book is how to identify the work system's performance, separate from the performance of individuals.
Essential reading for managers and leaders, this is the classic work on management, problem solving, quality control, and more—based on the famous theory, 14 Points for Management
In his classic Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming describes the foundations for a completely new and transformational way to lead and manage people, processes, and resources. Translated into twelve languages and continuously in print since its original publication, it has proved highly influential. Research shows that Deming’s approach has high levels of success and sustainability. Readers today will find Deming’s insights relevant, significant, and effective in business thinking and practice. This…
I'm a programmer and technical author at Octopus Deploy and I'm deeply interested in DevOps. Since the 1950s, people have been studying software delivery in search of better ways of working. We’ve seen many revolutions since Lincoln Labs first introduced us to phased delivery, with lightweight methods transforming how we wrote software at the turn of the century. My interest in DevOps goes beyond my enthusiasm for methods in general, because we now have a great body of research that adds to our empirical observations on the ways we work.
Well, Doug McGregor was one of the earliest proponents of healthy workplace culture. The Human Side of Enterprise was written during the 1950s and contains the kind of advice you might associate with Dan Pink’s more recent book, Drive.
If you want to read a book from the pivot point between command and control management and modern theories of motivation, this is the place to start.
"What are your assumptions (implicit as well as explicit) about the most effective way to manage people?"
So began Douglas McGregor in this 1960 management classic. It was a seemingly simple question he asked, yet it led to a fundamental revolution in management. Today, with the rise of the global economy, the information revolution, and the growth of knowledge-driven work, McGregor's simple but provocative question continues to resonate-perhaps more powerfully than ever before.
Heralded as one of the most important pieces of management literature ever written, a touchstone for scholars and a handbook for practitioners, The Human Side of Enterprise…
I'm a programmer and technical author at Octopus Deploy and I'm deeply interested in DevOps. Since the 1950s, people have been studying software delivery in search of better ways of working. We’ve seen many revolutions since Lincoln Labs first introduced us to phased delivery, with lightweight methods transforming how we wrote software at the turn of the century. My interest in DevOps goes beyond my enthusiasm for methods in general, because we now have a great body of research that adds to our empirical observations on the ways we work.
The importance of Extreme Programming can’t be overstated.
Kent Beck created one of the few Agile methods that captured not just a process for managing work, but a set of practices that would keep your software manageable in the long run. Shortly after this book was published, the Agile Manifesto was created.
You might say, “the rest is history”, except the industry lost its way for a decade. Extreme Programming was revived in Dave Farley and Jez Humble’s Continuous Delivery – now a vital part of DevOps. The State of DevOps report has validated at least half of the Extreme Programming practices, and Continuous Delivery brings it to the fore once more.
"In this second edition of Extreme Programming Explained, Kent Beck organizes and presents five years' worth of experiences, growth, and change revolving around XP. If you are seriously interested in understanding how you and your team can start down the path of improvement with XP, you must read this book."
- Francesco Cirillo, Chief Executive Officer, XPLabs S.R.L. "The first edition of this book told us what XP was-it changed the way many of us think about software development. This second edition takes it farther and gives us a lot more of the 'why' of XP, the motivations and the…
I’ve been a professional software engineer and maintaining open-source software for 16 years. My work on open source has been heavily informed by industry best practises and my work on proprietary software has been heavily informed by open source best practises. Without these books, I’d be a worse engineer on many dimensions. Some of them may feel antiquated but all are still full of relevant wisdom for every open-source (and proprietary) software engineer today.
I was lucky enough to read an early draft of this book and it’s simply the best analysis of the open-source software ecosystem around today.
The writing style is friendly and not formal despite the academic-level research that went into this book. It made me think differently about the open-source projects I maintain and how I interact and chose those I use.
An inside look at modern open source software development and its influence on our online social world.
Open source software, in which developers publish code that anyone can use, has long served as a bellwether for other online behavior. In the late 1990s, it provided an optimistic model for public collaboration, but in the last 20 years it’s shifted to solo operators who write and publish code that's consumed by millions.
In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet…
I’ve been a professional software engineer and maintaining open-source software for 16 years. My work on open source has been heavily informed by industry best practises and my work on proprietary software has been heavily informed by open source best practises. Without these books, I’d be a worse engineer on many dimensions. Some of them may feel antiquated but all are still full of relevant wisdom for every open-source (and proprietary) software engineer today.
This is from an older generation of open source development, pre-GitHub, but much of the advice here is still incredibly relevant and astute today, helping provide advice on the interpersonal as well as technical sides to open source development.
Many of the underlying principles from this book are what form my grounding as an open-source maintainer for the last 15 years.
The corporate market is now embracing free, "open source" software like never before, as evidenced by the recent success of the technologies underlying LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Each is the result of a publicly collaborative process among numerous developers who volunteer their time and energy to create better software. The truth is, however, that the overwhelming majority of free software projects fail. To help you beat the odds, O'Reilly has put together Producing Open Source Software, a guide that recommends tried and true steps to help free software developers work together toward a common goal. Not just for…
I’ve been a professional software engineer and maintaining open-source software for 16 years. My work on open source has been heavily informed by industry best practises and my work on proprietary software has been heavily informed by open source best practises. Without these books, I’d be a worse engineer on many dimensions. Some of them may feel antiquated but all are still full of relevant wisdom for every open-source (and proprietary) software engineer today.
Another book that predates GitHub but provides a lot of actionable advice today that’s been mostly ignored across much of our industry.
Hard problems like “why isn’t my software project reliable?” are tackled head-on and addressed here. It was an early nudge for me to automate as much as possible in software projects and not ignore difficult problems with project organisation in favour of “fun” technical tasks.
"Ship It!" is a collection of tips that show the tools and techniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use them well. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modern practices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This book avoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readers find page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in the real world. Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, "Ship It!" will show you: which tools help, and which don't, how to keep a project moving, approaches to scheduling that work, how to build…
You know what ages like milk? Programming books. I always cringe when someone glances at my programming bookshelf. Some of those books are so dated, they make me appear out of touch by association. Sometimes, I feel compelled to justify myself. “Yes, that's the first edition of Thinking in Java…I keep it for nostalgic reasons, you know!” Yesterday’s software book is today’s fish and chip wrapper. However, there are exceptions. A few classics stay relevant for years, or even decades. This is a shortlist of software books that might be older than you, but are still very much worth reading.
In my consulting gigs, I come across plenty of clueless remarks. Here's a classic one: “We're falling behind schedule, so let's hire more coders.” Or a more recent gem: “We'll be ten times more productive if we generate code with AI.”
When I encounter such nonsense, I don't facepalm or cringe. Instead, I put on my poker face and drop a quote from The Mythical Man-Month.
In an industry where last year’s book is already outdated, Fred Brooks' collection of essays has been a guiding light for nearly half a century. His aphorisms have become legendary. “The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.” “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” “There is no silver bullet.” The list goes on and on.
John Carmack, one of the greatest programmers of our times, used to revisit this book every year or…
Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.
The future of talent management is now. I’m a teacher, consultant, and board member who is deeply interested in the social and economic impact of the freelance revolution. Millions of people around the world are now working for themselves as independent professionals or “solopreneurs”. Millions more are taking on freelance assignments to augment their income or increase their expertise and experience. Technology makes it possible for professionals in many fields to work remotely and free themselves from the limitations of their local economy. These benefits organizations by offering greater access to talent and gives professionals greater access to opportunity.
In a recent survey of HR leaders, 80% mentioned that they were continuing to organize their HR department based on the “Ulrich” model. Is there a more impressive recommendation for the impact of this book, and Dave’s research and writing? In HR Champions, Ulrich points out the importance of three types of HR work: business partners, specialists, and shared services. In a recent HR Management article, that model was expanded to include a fourth category: project management. Technology is obviously a much bigger factor in HR work since 1996 when the book was first published. But, this oldie but goodie has aged extraordinarily well and continues to be relevant and insightful. If you are in HR or interested in talent management at scale, this book has to be on your list.
The author argues that the roles of human resource professionals must be redefined to meet the competitive challenges organizations face today and into the future. He provides a framework that identifies four distinct roles of human resource professionals: strategic player, administrative expert, employee champion, and change agent. He includes many examples to demonstrate that human resource professionals must operate in all four areas simultaneously in order to contribute fully. He urges a shift of these professionals' mentality from "what I do" to "what I deliver" and makes specific recommendations for how individuals in human resources can partner with line managers…
