17 books every CTO must read

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We present you with the ultimate list of 17 books for every CTO. Piotr Karwatka, CTO at Divante, recommends these books to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge about building a development team, managing innovation, and cooperating with the sales and marketing departments.

 

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Books on business management & leadership

Lean Startup: The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

A bestseller on the “New York Times” list which will help you transform your new business idea into its intended, final effect. Learn the practical methods to avoid mistakes in product development. Learn to systematically evaluate and interpret early signals coming from the market, and decide which direction to take. Use the knowledge of innovators who have brought their companies to the top, and join this esteemed group.

Lean Startup: The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Crossing The Chasm

The best-selling marketing guide that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early startup period. The third edition of “Crossing The Chasm” contains dozens of new examples of successes and failures, new strategies for marketing in the digital world, and Moore’s most current insights and findings.

Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore

Books on computer & technology

Joel On Software

This book covers every conceivable aspect of software programming—from the best way to write code, to the best way to design an office in which to write code. This book is a collection of the most important blog posts from the author’s blog with his comments and new insights.

Joel On Software by Joel Spolsky

The Mythical Man-Month

A book on software engineering and project management. The author combines the facts of software engineering with views that provoke thinking. “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later” – this is the main theme of the book and it’s called Brooks’ law. Brooks’ observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. Now, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice.

The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks

Accelerate

For four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim decided to find a way to measure the efficiency of software delivery. This book presents both the discoveries and the knowledge behind the research. By reading this book, you’ll learn how to measure the performance of your teams and what opportunities to invest in to increase your productivity.

Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

Why does software often drive users crazy? This book shows great examples of differences in thinking between programmers and users. In addition, he puts forward the thesis that the software industry is in a crisis caused by two factors: the drive of companies to release new versions of programs on a regular basis, which involves competitive struggles, and lowering the costs of software development by eliminating the stage of customer needs testing.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

This is a book about software engineering. It’s a collection of tips to improve the development process in a pragmatic way. The book uses analogies and short stories to present development methodologies and caveats. “The Pragmatic Programmer” illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. It doesn’t matter if you are a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you’ll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and last but not least, job satisfaction.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World

This book tells you how to program, test and design software to make it effective. You’ll learn pragmatic ways of approaching the development process and your personal coding techniques. If you want to be a better developer, you should read this book.

Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application

This book is about business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies. It helps you to build a web application in a faster and easier way. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial – it’s a book full of ideas.

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application by Jason Fried

 

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Books on business & money

The Project Phoenix

If you want to understand the IT industry, this book is second to none. Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. He gets a promotion and he has 3 months to fix the workflow in the company, or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced. The race against time begins and Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. Will he succeed? If you want to know, reach for the book.

The Project Phoenix by Gene Kim, George Spafford and Kevin Behr

ReWork

This is not another book about writing a business plan, studying the competition or seeking investors. Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the competition. Less talking and more working. Find out how you can work efficiently and how to get the attention of those in your surroundings without having to spend a lot of money.

ReWork by Jason Fried

The Developer’s Code: What Real Programmers Do

This book gathers a number of essays and thoughts software development. “The Developer’s Code” is intended for professional developers. If you are seeking a perspective on what creating software is, or if you want a set of guidelines laden by real-world experience, this is a book you need.

The Developer’s Code: What Real Programmers Do by Ka Wai Cheung

Head First Software Development

This book was made to guide you through the best practices of software development. Reading this book will make you will gain essential information about each step of the software development lifecycle and understand how and why different development processes work.

Head First Software Development by Dan pilone and Russ Miles

Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban

On the example of the Swedish police, which combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project, you will learn how to use Lean. The book is split into two parts. The first part is about the author’s experience as a facilitator for the Swedish national police and the PUST project. The second part is a collection of techniques used by Henrik Kniberg.

Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban by Henrik Kniberg

Driving Technical Change

No more problems with convincing your team, organization, company or customer to adopt a new methodology or technology. “Driving Technical Change” is a collection of tips and strategies for dealing with people skeptical of the changes. The techniques and strategies presented in this book will help your organization adopt your solutions.

Driving Technical Change by Terrence Ryan

Books on engineering

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

This is the book that shows the connection between emotions and how people relate to ordinary objects. The main topic of the book is the way in which emotions play a role in the human ability to understand the world and learn new things. Whether designer or consumer, user or inventor, this book can be a helpful guide.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Don Norman

 

Enjoy the reading!

 

PS. Check also our Survival guide for new CTOs

Published December 27, 2018