The Phoenix Project is one of the most highly recommended books within IT, as it bridged the gap between the world of doctrines such as ITIL with Lean & DevOps.

I read it a few years ago however it led to many more questions, primarily around the area of how to know when to apply what, to where, and why.

It was not until I stumbled across the work of Simon Wardley that things fell into place.

Simon has an extensive collection of information on his blog (http://blog.gardeviance.org/), as well as recordings of videos of presentations at events.

The following short YouTube video serves as a good introduction to Simon’s work:

https://youtu.be/Ty6pOVEc3bA

Simon has also now begun to form this into a book (http://blog.gardeviance.org/2016/08/on-being-lost.html), which is a great read.

Chapter 6 - Getting started yourself - includes Simon’s recommended book list, which is copied below for reference:

Simon’s Recommended Book List

Sun Tzu, the art of Warfare (Robert Ames translation) Science, Strategy and War by Frans P.B. Osinga

Atlas of Military Strategy 1618 – 1878 by David Chandler.

The Simplicity Cycle by Dan Ward

Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely

Hierarchy Theory, The Challenge of Complex Systems by Howard H. Pattee

The Evolution of Technology by George Basalla

Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers.

Customer driven IT by David Moschella

Digitizing Government by Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden and Mark Thompson

Learn or Die by Edward D.Hess

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation by Jan Fagerberg, David Mowery and Richard Nelson

The Starfish and the Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

Does IT matter? by Nicholas Carr

Technological revolutions and financial capital, Carlota Perez

The Entrepreneurial State by Marriana Mazzucato

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener

The Age of Discontinuity by Peter F. Drucker

The Red Queen, William P. Barnett