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

Praise for Accelerate

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 doesnt read this book will be replaced by someone who has.

Thomas A. Limoncelli, coauthor of
The Practice of Cloud System Administration

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 behaviors 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 organization design this is manna from heaven!

As chapter 3 concludes: You can act your way to a better culture by implementing these practices in technology organizations [emphasis mine]. 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 organization people want to work at. I will be giving copies of this book to all my clients.

Dan North, independent technology and organization consultant

Whether they recognize it or not, most organizations today are in the business of software development in one way, shape, or form. And most are being dragged down by slow lead times, buggy output, and complicated features that add expense and frustrate users. It doesnt need to be this way. Forsgren, Humble, and Kim shine a compelling light on the what, why, and how of DevOps so you, too, can experience what outstanding looks and feels like.

Karen Martin, author of
Clarity First and The Outstanding Organization

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, Infrastructure Operations Engineer at Travis CI
and author of Effective DevOps

The art of constructing a building is a well-understood engineering practice nowadays. However, in the software world, we have been looking for patterns and practices that can deliver the same predictable and reliable results whilst minimising 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, Group CTO, Hiscox

In their book Accelerate , Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim dont 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 led 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, VP and CTO, Americas, VMware

The organizations that thrive in the future will be those that leverage digital technologies to improve their offerings and operations. Accelerate summarizes the best metrics, practices, and principles to use for improving software delivery and digital product performance, based on years of well-documented research. We strongly recommend this book to anyone involved in a digital transformation for solid guidance about what works, what doesnt work, and what doesnt matter.

Tom Poppendieck and Mary Poppendieck, authors of
the Lean Software Development series of books

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 communitys qualitative findings with research-based insights that I have heard from no other source.

Baron Schwartz, Founder and CEO of VividCortex
and coauthor of High Performance MySQL

ACCELERATE

25 NW 23rd Pl, Suite 6314
Portland, OR 97210

Copyright 2018 by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim.

Chapter 16 Copyright 2018 by Karen Whitley Bell and Steve Bell,

Lean IT Strategies, LLC.

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
22 21 20 19 181 2 3 4 5 6

Cover and book design by Devon Smith Creative, LLC

Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN: 978-1942788331
eBook ISBN: 978-194278355
Kindle ISBN: 978-194278362
Web PDF ISBN: 978-194278379

Publishers note to readers: Although the authors and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book is correct, the authors and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

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

ACCELERATE

Contents

Figures

Tables

FOREWORD

By Martin Fowler

A few years ago I read a report that said, We can now assert with confidence that high IT performance correlates with strong business performance, helping to boost productivity, profitability, and market share. When I read something like that, my usual response is to toss it with great force into the rubbish bin, because thats usually a tell for some bogus bullshit masquerading as science. I hesitated this time, however, for this was the 2014 State of DevOps Report. One of its authors was Jez Humble, a colleague and friend who I knew was equally allergic to this kind of twaddle. (Although I have to confess that another reason for not tossing it was that I was reading it on my iPad.)

So, instead I emailed Jez to find out what lay behind this statement. A few weeks later I was on a call with him and Nicole Forsgren, who patiently walked me though the reasoning. While Im no expert on the methods they used, she said enough to convince me there was some real analysis going on here, far more than I usually see, even in academic papers. I followed the subsequent State of DevOps reports with interest, but also with growing frustration. The reports gave the results of their work but never contained the explanation that Nicole walked through with me on the phone. This greatly undermined their credibility, as there was little evidence that these reports were based on more than speculation. Finally, those of us that had seen behind the curtains convinced Nicole, Jez, and Gene to reveal their methods by writing this book. For me, its been a long wait, but Im glad I now have something that I can genuinely recommend as a way to look at IT delivery effectivenessone thats based on more than a few analysts scattered experiences.