Recommended reading for the CTO/CIO

There are really only three fundamental ways for a senior technology executive to hone his or her abilities: networking with peers, on-the-job experience, and voracious reading. An astounding number of executives neglect the last one. You’ll see me cite seminal books in the field fairly regularly, across the spectrum of IT-related concerns. I’ll collect a list of the most important ones here.

Ask your next CTO/CIO candidate how many of the “Must Read” books he or she has read. A seasoned IT executive should be familiar with most of them.

Must reads:

• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
• Rapid Development, by Steve McConnell
• The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition, by Gerald Weinberg
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition, by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
• Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Best Practices (Microsoft)), by Steve McConnell
• Testing Computer Software, 2nd Edition, by Cem Kaner et al.

Recommended:

• Creating a Software Engineering Culture, by Karl Wiegers
• Quality Software Management: Anticipating Change (Quality Software Management), by Gerald Weinberg
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson
• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, by Nicholas Carr
• IT’s hidden face: Everything you always wanted to know about Information Technology. A look behind the scenes, by Claude Roeltgen

Currently in the reading pile:

• Adventures of an IT Leader, by Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O’Donnell
• Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers, by Louis Testa
• IT Savvy, by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross
• Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris
  

Architecture and Technical:

• Scalable Internet Architectures, by Theo Schlossnagle
• Scalable Web Sites, by Cal Henderson
• Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers), by Michael Nygard

Note: I’ve also started a series of posts on the most important “human factors in IT” books, picking what I consider the most important three such books from each decade, starting with the 1970s.