Become an Awesome Software Architect With These Books

Become an awesome Software Architect with these books #

Excerpt #
We have listed engineering books to help you become an awesome software architect! Books have influenced us in our careers and even inspired us to write

We have listed engineering books to help you become an awesome software architect!

Books have influenced us in our careers and even inspired us to write and our own book, The Value Flywheel Effect.

Become an awesome Software Architect with the books that inspired us

Hot off the press #

Serverless Development on AWS: Building Enterprise-Scale Serverless Solutions by Sheen Brisals and Luke Hedger

We are reading the newly published Development on AWS: Building Enterprise-Scale Serverless Solutions by Sheen Brisals and Luke Hedger. It is a brilliant book and will make our recommendation list!

The book looks at the fact that serverless technology adoption is burgeoning, but practical advice for development teams looking to leverage it on AWS has been scarce—until now.

Sheen Brisals, recognised as an AWS Serverless Hero, and Luke Hedger, an AWS Community Builder, offer us architectural insights, security protocols, and data management best practices.

This book is for architects and engineers who want to construct robust, enterprise-scale serverless solutions, looking at essential adoption requirements, development tools, and thorough examinations of testing methodologies for event-driven and distributed serverless services. With a focus on adaptability and sustainability, readers will get invaluable insights for navigating evolving landscapes to craft successful serverless solutions.

Top 4 books by Mark, Mike, and Dave to make our list of 12 #

1. Continuous Delivery #

Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley

This book came out in 2011. It has been massively influential in how high-performing teams deliver their software today. And you can refer back to it today. It is still as fresh as it was when it was written.

Teams would do well to actually read it again to see what lessons they can take from it and apply it to their own ecosystem and environment. We see a lot of companies not striving for continuous delivery. They’re in a halfway house. They have an automated pipeline, but they’re not getting the benefits from a truly continuous delivery environment. It’s a world-class book full of good practice and lessons learned.

A lot of stuff from the book is really consumable and their bite sizes on YouTube are really good. Their ‘Modern Software Engineering’ book is an excellent follow on from them. It is a really great book if you want a more modern take.

2. Domain-Driven Design #

Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans

It’s good just to see it this book in print to refer back to genuine common sense such as how to describe a domain, good domain models, and the importance of collaboration, communication, and shared understanding. I really enjoyed their chapter on ubiquitous languages. Those sorts of things stand the test of time. You can be in different types of stacks or scenarios, but the knowledge is abstract so it’s broadly applicable.

In roles, where you are facilitating and designing, it’s good for checking your thinking. I definitely recommend that you have it on your bookshelf. Especially if you’re leading a team or working in architecture.

3. Wardley Mapping #

Wardley Mapping by Simon Wardley

It’s a great book and far ahead of its time. It’s 15 to 20 years old? When you are writing a seminal book, you have got to have the headspace to think it all out. And then once the book comes out, and the topic is popular, it disappears into the ether.

It’s not exactly an easy read, but it’s ‘as deep as well’, as the saying goes. We don’t take every word of it literally. But it’s definitely a good read and will challenge your thinking still to this day. You think you understand something, then you go back to the book and realise that you understand it more.

With life experience and the experience of applying these tools and techniques, you get a fresh perspective. With more experience, you have a few more scars because you tried things that didn’t quite work. And then you go back into the book and realise that it makes sense.

4. Accelerate #

Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim

This book distills down and captures (with scientific backing) all of the things that we are trying to articulate or were trying to push or evolve in our ecosystem. It was a great accelerator for us. And it gave us validation for the things that we were trying to push. You refer back to it all the time.

All the stuff you need is there. The capabilities to drive improvement, the scientific backing and little snippets of good advice and guidance. It is one of the best.

5. Extreme Ownership #

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

We like applying real-world experience to significant scenarios. There’s some cracking guidance on how to own something and lead. One that sticks out is centralised command and leading up and down the line.

It’s a well-thought-out and structured book on how to think, modern leadership, and how to motivate people to be successful. We enjoy reading about how to think through systems, particularly in a leadership position, in technical orbs, and stuff like that. It helps you to think like a leader.

6. Team Topologies #

Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

This book was also a complete game changer. It’s such a powerful question: ‘What type of team are you?’ And your immediate response is: ‘What do you mean?’. The answer is that you’re a platform team, an enablement team, a value stream team or you’re not anything.

All the techniques are in it with different tools and team APIs and stuff. You can pick it up and implement it tomorrow. It cuts through the socio-technical noise from large teams and enterprises. It helps you streamline your team’s workflow in a way that was hard to articulate before.

7. Reaching Cloud Velocity #

Reaching Cloud Velocity by Jonathan Allen, Thomas Blood, Werner Vogels, Adrian Cockcroft, Mark Schwartz

We refer to this book all the time. It has Wardley Mapping in it which is great. And it covers how to succeed in the cloud. In other words, what are the principles and tenets that you should apply? What are the cultural and organisational things you should think about as you’re starting to move to the cloud? It looks at the architectural approaches and patterns you should adopt.

And how to do security and governance. It also looks at what’s your business strategy, now that you’re in the cloud.

8. Designing Data-Intensive Applications #

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann

We’ve just been ramping up on data architectures. And the book ‘Designing Data-Intensive Applications’ is such a good book to do that. It goes into everything. It’s almost like a bible for anything data related such as streaming, different types of databases, and why you make decisions on certain types of databases. You get into the design and the nuance of it. And understanding the landscape.

It’s one of those books where you’ll have numerous cycles through it as you can progress through different scenarios. In terms of how it’s laid out, it’s really good. It’s broken into 2 to 3-minute blocks. So you can get straight into it and get perspective or context. We recommend it for anybody working in distributed or microservice architectures, dealing with different types of data and interactions.

9. Creativity Inc #

Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

This book is about Pixar, who went up against Disney by direct selling films. The full title of the book is ‘Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Check out it! They describe trying to create something and having the discipline to make it. They talk about the inspiration of creating and then actually making it.

And how they structured the company and all the challenges they had. It’s interesting because you’ve seen all the Pixar films like Toy Story, etc. And Steve Jobs was part of it as well like because he was one of their main backers. It’s a brilliant book that is really nicely written with solid ideas.

10. Working Backwards #

Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr

We see Amazon from the outside eg. Amazon.com, Amazon Prime, deliveries, and Alexa. But how do they actually do it? How can they be so successful and set themselves up for success? In what way is their leadership structured?

‘Working Backwards’ distills down and gives insight into how Amazon operates at that sort of scale. It looks at how they have remained successful despite their growth. It’s full of great insights on leadership principles, how they set up the flywheel, how they run their hiring process, and how they structured their organisations for success.

It shows how they really go after the two pizza teams’ mentality and model. But also how they maintain good company culture as they scale. The book is full of good advice, guidance, and actionable stuff that you can refer back to.

They go into their press release format with examples. So that you can apply the techniques in your context and environment.

11. Ask your Developer #

Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson

There’s another timing bias for this one. It is ‘Ask Your Developer’ by Jeff Lawson, looking at the developer-centric approach at Twilio. There’s a lot of good content on how to inspire great individuals and teams to be creative. There’s a good chapter on developer experience, their golden path, and off-roading.

And how they’ve organised around developer experience. We’re a big proponent of limiting cognitive burden and increasing developer experience. So it’s good to read about that in other orgs. I recommend it as a good read. It comes across well on Audible too.

12. The Software Architect Elevator #

The Software Architect Elevator by Gregor Hohpe

Our last book is ‘The Software Architect Elevator’, by Gregor Hohpe. We love this concept by Gregor that an architect rides the elevator to talk to the executive in the penthouse, and then goes down to the basement to write code and all the floors in between. He talks about how an architect can behave and operate to be successful in a company.

Gregor is the ‘architect’s architect’. He is the author of ‘Enterprise Integration Patterns’ and books on cloud strategy and IT transformation. This book is a great read for understanding what modern-day architects should be like.

We refer back to that book and try to model ourselves. As a technical leader, you don’t compromise your principles, but you tailor your message for the audience you’re talking to. It’s a great way to coach tech people who are trying to move toward Leadership and how to approach different contexts and people.

Serverless Craic from The Serverless Edge

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