David Anderson - The Value Flywheel Effect

Praise for

THE VALUE FLYWHEEL EFFECT

The Value Flywheel Effect is a timely and hugely valuable book providing a set of principles and ways of working to navigate and exploit the fast-changing technology and business landscape. Without sense-making capabilities, organizations are increasingly struggling to act effectively in the modern disruptive technology context, so much so that the ideas in The Value Flywheel Effect amount to a kind of survival handbook for the next decade or two. The Value Flywheel Effect is essential reading for any leader or practitioner who wants to help their organization to survive and thrive.

Matthew Skelton , Co-Author of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

Im delighted to see that David, Mark, and Michael have taken the time and considerable trouble to explain how they architected and delivered serverless innovation at Liberty Mutual. Why? Because change is the only constant, and the pace of technology innovation is accelerating this change. As Jon F. Kennedy said those that look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. This book is required reading if you want to leverage serverless technology.

Dr. Jacqui Taylor , CEO and Co-Founder, FlyingBinary, and #15 Most Influential UK Technologist

The future for company creation and innovation relies on speed, scalability, and sustainability. To nurture thriving products, organizations, and cultures, you need to understand the landscape youre competing in, along with the path to choose to succeed. Packed with real-world examples, case studies, and practical tools applied to complex domains, The Value Flywheel Effect is required reading to plot your future and the business you want to be.

Barry OReilly , Co-Founder Nobody Studios, Author of Unlearn and Lean Enterprise

Required reading for every level of an organization adopting modern cloud, and grounded in unparalleled lived experience of transformation. Im sure Ill be referencing this for years.

Ben Ellerby , Founder, Aleios, and AWS Serverless Hero

The journey to the cloud is one of leadership and change management rather than purely a technical pathway. The Value Flywheel Effect is a great foundation for any organization on a modern cloud journey. Based on how its applied in the real world, to real problems, there are great insights into how to navigate waves of change.

Seamus Cushley , VP Product Development, Bazaarvoice

Serverless architecture combined with clarity of purpose is a lethal combination for winning in todays competitive landscape. The Value Flywheel Effect provides powerful insights on how you can leverage these modern practices to navigate an enterprise cloud transformation and accelerate the delivery of value.

Drew Firment , SVP, A Cloud Guru

The Value Flywheel Effect shares a surprising collection of leadership and transformation practices that are sure to help you stir up the right kind of trouble, no matter where you are in the organization. Also an excellent reference for your Wardley Mapping practice, with helpful guidance, plenty of examples, and new things to try as well!

Ben Mosior , LearnWardleyMapping.com

The Value Flywheel Effect presents a practical road map to innovation, focusing on a modernization strategy that takes full advantage of modern cloud capabilities. Engineers and their leadership will learn real-world techniques based on the authors experience evolving a value-first approach at a Fortune 100 company to reinvent traditional enterprise development.

Sam Dengler , AWS Principal Developer Advocate

The Value Flywheel Effect is a valuable read for the technology leaders of today and tomorrow. It successfully weaves tools like Wardley Mapping, systems thinking, north star metrics, and the serverless mindset into one cohesive framework for organizational success.

Ajay Nair , Director, Amazon Web Services

In working together with the authors for several years, I was always inspired and challenged as a leader to ensure engineering excellence was the first point of focus for myself and my teams. This book does a fantastic job laying out the flywheel impact they identified. I can say that while it can perhaps feel elusive, it is real and ended up being far more powerful than I ever imagined. A must read!

John Heveran , EVP & CIO Global Risk Solutions, Liberty Mutual Insurance

There are many resources on the technical how of serverless, but there is very little out there on the higher-level why of choosing a serverless-first approach to software engineering in organizations. If youre a senior technology decision maker and you care about delivering value fast and frequently to your users while also minimizing the total cost of ownership and cultivating an environment in which your engineers can thrive and become self-sufficient, The Value Flywheel Effect will provide you with a framework and tools to make the strategic decisions to deliver on these goals.

Paul Swail , Independent Cloud Consultant, ServerlessFirst.com

The Value Flywheel Effect is a must-read for anyone looking to lead successful software organizations in the modern cloud era. Without a doubt, this is one of the most practical guides ever written to help teams create and rally around a shared vision, develop customer-centric road maps to meaningfully impact north star metrics, and execute well-thought-out strategies to achieve extraordinary outcomes. It strikes an excellent balance between teaching you the methods, theories, and practices used, and their implementation using clear examples and real-world case studies. Dave, Mark, and Michael are masters at what they do, and this book imparts their shared expertise into the go-to instruction manual for tomorrows technology leaders.

Jeremy Daly , AWS Serverless Hero, Publisher of OffByNone.io, and Host of Serverless Chats

If you are in the business of producing software, no matter your role, you need to read this book. It does more than join the dots of what we already know. Like all the best advancements, it somehow pulls the very clever trick of creating a whole new perspective on software delivery, and yet feels both intuitive and obvious at the same time. How important are the ideas in this book? Well, I would go as far as to say that if you are not using the value flywheel philosophy as the basis of your own delivery, then those that do will win. Simple as that. Its that good. And that important.

Tara Simpson , CEO, Instil Software

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Copyright 2022 by David Anderson

All rights reserved, for information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to Permissions, IT Revolution Press, LLC, 25 NW 23rd Pl, Suite 6314, Portland, OR 97210

First Edition

Printed in the United States of America

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Cover and book design by Devon Smith/D. Smith Creative, LLC

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939507

ISBN: 9781950508570

eBook ISBN: 9781950508587

Web PDF ISBN: 9781950508594

Audio: 9781950508600

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases or for information on booking authors for an event, please visit our website at ITRevolution.com.