Where to find it
What’s it about?
IT Revolution has an article “adapted from an excerpt of Accelerate” which provides a pretty good synopsis of the book. Briefly stated, though, it’s a deep dive into years of research on what makes some companies perform really well (in terms of software delivery performance), while others struggle.
Capabilities
The authors have “uncovered 24 key capabilities that drive improvements to software delivery performance.” Over time, I plan on writing about many of these, but for now, I’ll just list them.
Continuous delivery
- Version control
- Deployment automation
- Continuous integration
- Trunk-based development
- Test automation
- Test data management
- Shift left on security
- Continuous delivery
Architecture
- Loosely-coupled architecture
- Empowered teams
Product and process
- Customer feedback
- Value stream
- Working in small batches
- Team experimentation
Lean management and monitoring
- Change approval process
- Monitoring
- Proactive notification
- WIP limits
- Visualizing work
Cultural capabilities
- Westrum organizational culture
- Supporting learning
- Collaboration among teams
- Job satisfaction
- Transformational leadership
My thoughts
It’s an excellent book. The data presented and—more importantly—the insights offered within these pages are very, very good. I highly recommend reading it.
That said, I’ve gotta be honest here: Reading it is pretty boring. It’s super interesting stuff, but a pretty dry read. Not that it’s supposed to be a page-turner. The book is about capabilities for improving software delivery after all. Useful, interesting, but not exactly riveting.
I also wish it worked a little better as a reference book. Finding quotable passages for any given capability takes a bit of spelunking. That extra friction makes it tough to quickly cite it during a conversation when I’m trying to talk about one of these capabilities.
Still, those are minor complaints to an otherwise excellent book.