Book review: Continuous Digital

Continuous Digital (Amazon) is what everyone in the software business needs to read, to understand how ‘IT’ and ‘the business’ are not separate. Even in small companies, you find a separate Engineering department, a separation that leads to all kinds of disfunction, which other books don’t address.

At first look, this looks like both a book about software for business people, and a book about business for software developers. However, it goes beyond that by explaining how business constraints influence software development, and vice versa, which makes it a far more useful book than those that treats these topics separately.

Allan Kelly builds on things you may already know about, to explain consequences you don’t. Best of all, it’s a constructive and positive story that avoids the trap of merely complaining about what doesn’t work. Instead, Continuous Digital covers a surprisingly large number of topics, from team composition and prioritisation to governance and budgeting. The result is a large book that impressively delivers insights in each of its 26 chapters. It’s a more substantial and rewarding read than Project Myopia, but also a book I wish more of my colleagues had read in the past.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Recommended.