Four books. Two are foundational (you should at minimum skim them). Two are operational classics worth keeping on the shelf for the rest of your career.
The operational bible. The "Three Ways" — flow, feedback, continual learning — are the spine of the course. Read chapters on deployment pipelines, telemetry, and psychological safety even if you skip everything else.
Open PDF →The research behind the practice. Defines and measures the four DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, time to restore. If you remember one phrase from this book it's "elite performers deploy multiple times a day with low failure rates."
Open PDF →How to organise the people, not just the code. Four team types (stream-aligned, platform, enabling, complicated-subsystem) and three interaction modes (collaboration, X-as-a-service, facilitating). The book that explains why "you build it, you run it" actually works.
Open PDF →The textbook. Use it as a reference for SDLC models, requirements analysis, and software-quality definitions. Less of a cover-to-cover read; more of a glossary with examples.
Open PDF →