Bookshelf

AI & Technology

On what it actually takes to turn AI and technology into enterprise capability.

Recent

• Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

  Ethan Mollick · 2024

  The most practical account I have read of what working alongside AI looks like day to day — and why the official process is usually the last thing to catch up.

• Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence

  Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb · 2022

  Explains why AI pilots succeed and enterprise adoption stalls: the value sits in redesigning the system around the prediction, not in the model itself.

• Competing in the Age of AI

  Marco Iansiti, Karim R. Lakhani · 2020

  Makes the case that the operating model, not the algorithm, is the real competitive unit — which is exactly where most transformation programs never look.

• The Coming Wave

  Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar · 2023

  A sober reminder that governance is not a compliance afterthought. Containment is a design problem, and most organizations have not started designing.

Enterprise Transformation

On why large programs stall, and how work really flows through an organization.

Recent

• Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model

  Marty Cagan · 2024

  Names the gap between adopting the vocabulary of product and actually changing how decisions get made. Most transformations stop at the vocabulary.

• Wiring the Winning Organization

  Gene Kim, Steven J. Spear · 2023

  Gives language to something I have watched for years: performance is decided by the wiring between people and teams, not the talent inside them.

• Team Topologies

  Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais · 2019

  The org chart describes reporting lines; this book describes how work actually moves between teams. That second picture is the one that matters.

• Sooner Safer Happier

  Jonathan Smart, Zsolt Berend, Myles Ogilvie, Simon Rohrer · 2020

  An honest catalogue of the anti-patterns large enterprises fall into when they try to become agile by decree.

• Flow Engineering

  Steve Pereira, Andrew Davis · 2024

  Practical mapping techniques for making invisible work visible — the first step to closing the gap between the plan and the operating reality.

• Product Operations

  Melissa Perri, Denise Tilles · 2023

  Treats the plumbing between strategy and teams as a discipline in its own right. Most organizations leave that plumbing to chance.

Foundations

• The Principles of Product Development Flow

  Donald G. Reinertsen · 2009

  Still the most rigorous book on why queues, batch size and cost of delay quietly decide outcomes that dashboards never show.

• Developing Products in Half the Time: New Rules, New Tools

  Preston G. Smith, Donald G. Reinertsen · 1997

  Decades old and still right: speed is an economic decision, and most organizations never price it.

• Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are Not the Point

  Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck · 2009

  A reminder that results come from the system leaders build, not the targets they set.

• Scaling Lean & Agile Development

  Craig Larman, Bas Vodde · 2008

  The best early treatment of why scaling agility is an organizational-design problem, not a process-rollout problem.

• The Lean Startup

  Eric Ries · 2011

  Validated learning applies inside large enterprises at least as much as in startups — they are simply better at hiding what they have not learned.

• Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed

  Barry Boehm, Richard Turner · 2003

  An early, grown-up refusal of dogma: the right method depends on the real risk profile, not the fashionable one.

• Agile Management for Software Engineering

  David J. Anderson · 2003

  Applied the Theory of Constraints to software management long before flow became fashionable.

• Software in 30 Days

  Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland · 2012

  Written for executives rather than teams — useful for showing leaders what changes on their side of the table.

• Agile Software Development

  Alistair Cockburn · 2001

  Treats software as a cooperative game between people, which is still the most accurate description I know.

• The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility

  Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick · 2008

  A humane guide for the people whose roles change most in a transformation, and who are usually least supported through it.

Leadership & Organizations

On informal networks, invisible leaders, and the systems beneath the organization chart.

Recent

• Humanocracy

  Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini · 2020

  The closest book I know to my own thesis: bureaucracy is the official organization, and it is quietly taxing the real one.

• Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

  Amy C. Edmondson · 2023

  Separates intelligent failure from the preventable kind. Organizations that cannot tell them apart stop telling the truth about both.

• Empowered

  Marty Cagan, Chris Jones · 2020

  What leadership looks like when teams are trusted with problems instead of handed features.

• The Motive

  Patrick Lencioni · 2020

  Another Lencioni fable, this one about why leaders take the job. Motive determines which uncomfortable work gets done and which gets delegated away.

Foundations

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

  Patrick Lencioni · 2002

  The book that proved a fable can carry a serious idea. It shaped how I chose to write The Tower of Progress.

• Tribal Leadership

  Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright · 2008

  Maps the informal tribes that actually run organizations — the ones that never appear on the chart.

• The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager

  Daniel Mezick · 2012

  Treats culture as something you can see and work with, not a slogan on the wall.

• The Servant Leader

  James A. Autry · 2001

  An early, practical case that leading through service is a performance strategy, not a soft one.

• Collaboration Explained

  Jean Tabaka · 2006

  Facilitation as a leadership skill — the quiet craft behind most decisions that actually stick.

• Personal Kanban: Mapping Work, Navigating Life

  Jim Benson, Tonianne DeMaria Barry · 2011

  Visible work starts with your own. Leaders who cannot see their own queue rarely see anyone else's.

CTO Field Notes

On the practice of technology leadership inside complex enterprises.

Recent

• The Engineering Executive's Primer

  Will Larson · 2024

  The most honest book on what the senior technology role actually involves once the title is on the door.

• Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track

  Will Larson · 2021

  Describes the invisible leaders of engineering organizations — the people who hold systems together without formal authority.

• The Staff Engineer's Path

  Tanya Reilly · 2022

  Practical about the unglamorous glue work that keeps complex technology organizations from quietly falling apart.

Foundations

• Agile Product Management with Scrum

  Roman Pichler · 2010

  A clear account of the product owner role before it became a job title without authority.

• Agile Excellence for Product Managers

  Greg Cohen · 2010

  A useful bridge for product managers moving from document-driven to team-driven work.

• The Power of Scrum

  Jeff Sutherland, Rini van Solingen, Eelco Rustenburg · 2011

  A short business novel that makes the case for Scrum through story rather than ceremony.

• User Stories Applied

  Mike Cohn · 2004

  Requirements as conversations rather than contracts — still misunderstood two decades later.

• Agile Estimating and Planning

  Mike Cohn · 2005

  Planning as a way to learn, not a promise to defend.

• Specification by Example

  Gojko Adzic · 2011

  Shared examples close the gap between what the business means and what gets built.

• Getting Started with Kanban

  Paul Klipp · 2011

  A short, practical starting point for making work visible on a single team.