Book Brief: summary of “Accelerate: Science of Lean SW & DevOps”

“Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps” is a book by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. The book provides a deep look at the practices and principles of high performing technology organizations, and how to achieve faster and more reliable software delivery.

The book is based on a study of over 28,000 technical professionals and over 160 organizations, and it provides data-driven insights on what drives software delivery performance.
Here are the main takeaways from the book:

1. High-performing organizations have a strong culture of continuous improvement and experimentation.
2. The use of version control, continuous integration, and continuous delivery practices is associated with improved software delivery performance.
3. High-performing organizations have a higher ratio of automation to manual work, and they use automated testing and deployment.
4. High-performing organizations have a stronger focus on security and compliance, and they invest in tools and practices to reduce risk.
5. High-performing organizations have a stronger focus on collaboration, and they use practices such as pair programming, mob programming and collective code ownership.
6. High-performing organizations have a stronger focus on monitoring and observability, and they use practices such as log aggregation, distributed tracing, and automated incident management.
7. High-performing organizations have a stronger focus on learning and experimentation, and they use practices such as blameless post-mortems, and experimentation culture.
8. High-performing organizations have a stronger focus on product management, and they use practices such as product roadmaps, user research, and user feedback to inform product decisions.

The book also emphasizes the importance of feedback loops, and how they can be used to improve software delivery performance.

The book recommends several metrics to measure performance:

1. Deployment frequency: The number of times per day or week that code is deployed to production. High-performing organizations deploy code multiple times per day.
2. Lead time: The time it takes from when a change is made to when it is deployed in production. High-performing organizations have low lead times, typically measured in minutes or hours.
3. Mean time to recovery (MTTR): The time it takes to restore service after an incident. High-performing organizations have low MTTR, typically measured in minutes.
4. Change failure rate: The percentage of changes that result in a service interruption. High-performing organizations have low change failure rates, typically measured in single digits.
5. Time to restore service (TRS): The time it takes to restore service after an incident. High-performing organizations have low TRS, typically measured in minutes.
6. Number of failed deployments: The number of deployments that resulted in a service interruption. High-performing organizations have low numbers of failed deployments.
7. Number of rollbacks: The number of times a deployment is rolled back to a previous version. High-performing organizations have low numbers of rollbacks.
8. Number of customer complaints: The number of customer complaints related to service interruptions. High-performing organizations have low numbers of customer complaints.
9. Number of security breaches: The number of security breaches that occur in the organization. High-performing organizations have low numbers of security breaches.
10. Number of unplanned work: The amount of work that is not part of the regular development process, such as bugs and emergencies. High-performing organizations have low numbers of unplanned work.

It’s important to note that these metrics should be used in conjunction with other information, such as:

• customer satisfaction
• employee engagementTo get a comprehensive view of the performance of software technology organization.

In brief, “Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps” is a book that provides an in-depth look at the practices and principles of high-performing technology organizations, and how they achieve faster and more reliable software delivery.