I like this platform as a product paper a lot. You should check it out if you’re into DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, whatever. It’s also available in O’Reilly if you have that subscription and don’t want to lead-in yourself. Here’s some fun parts: Adopting a product mindset starts with continually evaluating the business context to manage “build versus buy” decisions. Contextual factors such as scale, compliance requirements, or the diversity of the workforce skill base and technology stacks often require organizations to opt out of an off-the-shelf solution and instead invest in a set of integrated capabilities designed for its specific needs.

Rick Rubin’s PodcastI like Tetragrammaton podcast a lot. (It’s one of those big deal podcasts that doesn’t actually have it’s own home page, which is totally weird - just search for it in your podcast listener or YouTube). Why? One, it is luxuriously long, Rick Rubin really gets everything out of the guests. Two, he asks great questions: at first they seem naive and simple, but then you hear the answers and stories and you realize how great the questions are.

The premise of this book, for most anyone, is painfully boring: planning out and project managing the installation of COTS software. This is mostly lumbering, on-premises ERP applications: those huge, multi-year installs of software that run the back office and systems of record for organizations. While this market is huge, touches almost every company, and has software that is directly or indirectly touched by almost everyone each day (anytime you buy something or interact with a company)…it’s no iPhone.