Your Reading Recommendations from Trajectory Attendees

Conferences provide learning opportunities for everyone in attendance. You can learn from the speakers, and from your peers at the event. To extend the learning opportunities at this year’s Trajectory, we have attendees the option to share with us a book they would recommend.

Part of me was expecting to see lots of repeats in the suggestions, but to my surprise, that wasn’t the case there were no duplicates (although there were a few surprises... keep reading to see what they were). In total, we received 21 unique book suggestions I’m sharing with you below.

Business

“The Lean Product Playbook” by Dan Olsen
“Start with Why” by Simon Sinek
“Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to build the Future” by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Leadership

“The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick M. Lencioni
“Radical Candor” by Kim Scott
“Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World” by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell

Fiction

“It's Not Luck” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
“The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim
“Venus on the Half Shell” by Phillip Joseph Farmer (Surprise #1, not sure if this is related to tech or just a good book).

Organizational change

“The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter” by Michael D Watkins
“Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow” by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

Personal Growth

“Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell
“The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread” Peter Reinhart (Surprise #2, the person who suggested it added this context: “I'm not even kidding - fundamentals, patience, precision”)
“Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most” by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Roger Fisher
“The Focus Project: The Not So Simple Art of Doing Less” by Erik Qualman

Software Development

“Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations” by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim
“The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers” by Robert Martin
“Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems” by Martin Kelppman
“Project to Product” by Mik Kersten
“The Mythical Man-Month” by Frederick Brooks
“Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems” by Niall Murphy, Betsy Beyer, and Chris Jones

Bonus: I didn’t participate in the survey of Trajectory attendees, and will admit to being a bit biased with my two suggestions for you, but here they are: