Accelerate DevOps with GitHub: Enhance software delivery performance with GitHub Issues, Projects, Actions, and Advanced Security

Met my expectations

I've been a fan of the author for a while in the DevOps community, so I was particularly interested in reading this book. A deep knowledge doesn't always translate to a useful read, but in this case it absolutely did.What impressed me in particular was the deliberate strategy of digging into the theory and principles of DevOps followed by instruction on how to implement what's been discussed. I love this structure - it's both strategy and how-to which serves all audiences from management to team leads and individual engineers, whether they use GitHub or another toolset.The author is opinionated on many principles and practices but those opinions are clearly-reasoned and explained with excellent examples and justifications.There are some fantastic insights into many aspects of software engineering and delivery that aren't often reflected upon. Rather than stopping simply at observation, the author suggests solutions and different ways of working. So rather than just theories and suggestions, you end up with actionable content.For example, early in the book the author makes some pointed observations on how and why poorly-timed estimation can be toxic. But rather than stopping there, he talks about what to do about it.Another thing that struck me was that there is really comprehensive coverage of each chapter and heading. Let's face it - the book isn't a short read. So in a book that covers so much ground it would be understandable to have a shallow look at some areas. But this isn't the case. Each heading could be a blog post or even a short white paper. You're never left feeling he just played lip service to a heading he knew the book should have.My only negative is one that's sadly unavoidable for technical books - updates and new features that come to GitHub will mean out of date information in time. Ironically this problem is made worse because GitHub follows many of the practices promoted in this book!However, at the time of this review, the content is very current, and the significant non-product content is very unlikely to date any time soon.In all, this is a very comprehensive and well-written book. I'd recommend it to anyone struggling with implementing DevOps concepts - whether they're using GitHub or not.

I’ve had the opportunity to see the author’s work in the community so I was interested to see his take on DevOps with GitHub… and I wasn’t disappointed.In summary, I appreciate the broad view of DevOps and not a narrow view as I’ve seen in many other books. In fact, including modern topics such as remote work, it may be the broadest set of “DevOps practices” that I’ve seen in one place. At 400+ pages it isn’t necessarily a book that I would recommend reading cover-to-cover in order. Luckily you can pick and chose the chapters that make sense, and review the others when it makes sense.The book does provide an interesting balance. It reviews and extends on some long held DevOps concepts and practices, brings in up-to-date research and references, and still manages to find some time to go deep on topics. The book goes deep enough to understand both general practices and a best practices use of GitHub supporting those practices. There are plenty of screen captures showing GitHub in action. But it does not generally go deep enough to provide a step-by-step. It does help the reader understand the breadth of options and an idea of what to look for in product documentation (usually in the references section).The downsides? It is a long technical book. I found myself reading because I was interested but not because it was necessarily easy. There were certainly places that I chose to skim and came back to later. And after reading the first few chapters I found my self skipping around based on my interests. There is also a risk that some content will become outdated due to the change of pace in tools like GitHub.In my opinion, if you are interested in a modernized view of broad DevOps concepts and best practices, and want to see how they are supported in GitHub, it is an excellent investment!

Github is full of features that can significantly boost your team’s productivity, and this book appears to cover them all. But the book is not only a great reference for learning how to maximize your value using Github, it is also packed with advice and ideas for any team to use to accelerate their software delivery with sound software practices. I particularly liked how some of the case studies helped explain the value of the concepts described in the book. You could use this book as a reference when implementing specific Github features, but I believe you will gain the most value by reading the entire book to learn how adopting several DevOps best practices together can really accelerate your software delivery. The book is much more than a DevOps reference, it provides a holistic overview of software delivery complete with good recommendations.

I have been working with many customers who are starting their DevOps journey using GitHub and Azure DevOps for a few years now. I was interested in this book as I am seeing more and more customers want to use GitHub and looking at ToC I realised that this book covers a lot of broad topics in detail. As other reviewers have said, this book provides in-depth insight into many core GitHub features - Projects, Actions, and Security. If you are new to DevOps, there is also great content on measuring velocity, getting better at outcomes using OKRs, how feature flags can help your deployments and a detailed explanation of trunk-based branching strategy.Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I think this is a must-have whether you are just starting your GitHub journey or helping your customers in migrations to GitHub. Highly recommend.