Madeline
If you don’t work in DevOps, technology, or have an interest in it, stop now. Turn around. Go the other way. Accelerate is about very techy things discussed by very techy people…. or not very techy things.
I picked up this book because I found myself working for a company in the DevOps space. I am taking advantage of being in a great industry. And I am using this opportunity to understand and learn as much as possible to get ahead.
The most valuable thing I got out of Accelerate was that DevOps is more than just technology, it’s the methodology of how an engineering team works together and what the authors have found to be true of high functioning teams. When I cracked the book open (and by that, I mean opened my Kindle app on my iPad) I expected a lot of tech speak. And although there was definitely some tech speak, I found instead a lot of theoretical methodology speak. A lot of the book was based on collecting data from surveys.
Accelerate was written from collecting data through surveys from individuals who work in this space over a period of a few years. The book starts with detailing what they have discovered, which was a bit hard to follow but interesting. The surveying methods described at the end and why they made some of the decisions they made lost me. I did not pick this book up to learn about survey methodology.
Although I don’t think this book was a full waist of my time, I wish I started with some of the authors other books. I am starting from the beginning and need a beginners book and this was not a beginners book. It had some great information but none of which was really applicable to me and my current situation.
