Book Club Resources

Supporting materials to enhance your "Accelerate" book club experience

Between Meetings Activities

Between Meetings

Reflection questions, practical exercises, and activities to deepen your understanding between sessions.

View Activities →

Discussion Practices

Facilitation guidelines and techniques for productive book club discussions.

Facilitation Guide →

Extensions

Advanced topics and learning paths to continue your DevOps transformation journey.

Explore Extensions →

Meeting 2: Technical Excellence

Meeting 3: Management & Sustainability

Meeting 4: Leadership & Transformation

Between Meetings Activities

Post-Meeting Reflection

After each session, spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on these key areas:

Key Insights: What surprised you most from this meeting?
Personal Application: How can you apply these concepts in your current role?
Organizational Gaps: What barriers exist in your organization?
Action Items: What specific changes will you make this week?

Practical Exercises

2
After Meeting 1:
  • Measure your team's current DORA metrics
  • Identify the biggest bottleneck in your deployment pipeline
  • Start a "deployment pain journal"
4
After Meeting 2:
  • Assess your organization's culture type using Westrum's model
  • Interview 3 colleagues about psychological safety
  • Implement one small continuous delivery practice
6
After Meeting 3:
  • Map your system's coupling dependencies
  • Identify opportunities for team autonomy
  • Experiment with lean management techniques
8
After Meeting 4:
  • Practice transformational leadership behaviors
  • Create a learning culture initiative
  • Develop your transformation roadmap

Discussion Practices

Creating Psychological Safety

Start with check-ins

How is everyone feeling about the concepts?

Normalize not knowing

"This is complex, let's figure it out together"

Encourage questions

"What would you like to understand better?"

Share failures

Discuss what hasn't worked in your organizations

Facilitation Techniques

Round-Robin Sharing

Give everyone a chance to share insights without interruption.

Problem-Solution Pairs

Identify organizational challenges, then brainstorm solutions together.

Real-World Examples

Share concrete examples from your work experiences.

Action Commitments

End each session with specific commitments for the next two weeks.

Extensions

Advanced Reading

After completing "Accelerate," consider these follow-up books:

  • "The DevOps Handbook" - Practical implementation guide
  • "Team Topologies" - Modern organizational design
  • "The Phoenix Project" - DevOps transformation story
  • "Continuous Delivery" - Technical practices deep-dive

Professional Development

DevOps Institute Certifications
DORA State of DevOps Reports (annual)
DevOps conferences and meetups
Internal communities of practice

Measurement & Monitoring

Set up DORA metrics tracking
Implement value stream mapping
Create organizational health dashboards
Regular culture assessments

Quick Reference

DORA Metrics Summary

Lead Time
Elite: < 1 hour
High: 1 day - 1 week
Medium: 1 week - 1 month
Low: 1-6 months
Deploy Frequency
Elite: Multiple/day
High: 1/week - 1/month
Medium: 1/month - 1/6months
Low: < 1/6months
MTTR
Elite: < 1 hour
High: < 1 day
Medium: < 1 week
Low: 1 week - 1 month
Change Fail Rate
Elite: 0-15%
High: 0-15%
Medium: 0-15%
Low: 31-45%

Culture Types (Westrum)

Pathological

Power-oriented, low trust, blame culture

Bureaucratic

Rule-oriented, modest trust, process focus

Generative

Performance-oriented, high trust, innovation focus