SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design (Theory in Practice)
by Nicolai M. Josuttis

This book demonstrates service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a concrete discipline rather than a hopeful collection of cloud charts. Built upon the author’s firsthand experience rolling out a SOA at a major corporation, SOA in Practice explains how SOA can simplify the creation and maintenance of large-scale applications. Whether your project involves a large set of Web Services-based components, or connects legacy applications to modern business processes, this book clarifies how — and whether — SOA fits your needs.

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John M. Vlissides

This book isn’t an introduction to object-oriented technology or design. Many books already do a good job of that…this isn’t an advanced treatise either. It’s a book of design patterns that describe simple and elegant solutions to specific problems in object-oriented software design….Once you understand the design patterns and have had an « Aha! » (and not just a « Huh? » experience with them, you won’t ever think about object-oriented design in the same way. You’ll have insights that can make your own designs more flexible, modular, reusable, and understandable–which is why you’re interested in object-oriented technology in the first place, right?

Head First Design Patterns
by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra

If you’ve read a Head First book, you know what to expect–a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.

SOA Principles of Service Design
by Thomas Erl

Formally endorsed by senior members of Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, BEA, Sun, Intel, HP, and SAP, this acclaimed book provides a thorough exploration of service-orientation and service engineering and also includes a concise overview of SOA and service-oriented computing from an industry perspective.

Understanding Enterprise Soa
by Eric Pulier

Understanding Enterprise SOA gives technologists and business people an invaluable and until now missing integrated picture of the issues and their interdependencies. You will learn how to think in a big way, moving confidently between technology- and business-level concerns. Written in a comfortable, mentoring style by two industry insiders, the book draws conclusions from actual experiences of real companies in diverse industries, from manufacturing to genome research. It cuts through vendor hype and shows you what it really takes to get SOA to work. Intended for both business people and technologists, the book reviews core SOA technologies and uncovers the critical human factors involved in deploying them. You will see how enterprise SOA changes the terrain of EAI, B2B commerce, business process management, « real time » operations, and enterprise software development in general.

Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (5th Edition)
by James F. Kurose, Keith W. Ross

An emphasis on application-layer paradigms and application programming interfaces, encourages a lively, hands-on experience with protocols and networking concepts. KEY TOPICS: Computer Networks and the Internet; Application Layer; Transport Layer; Network Layer; Link Layer and LANs; Wireless and Mobile Networks; Multimedia Networking; Security in Computer Networks; Network Management; New discussions of VPN, IPsec, VLAN and updated technology treatment. MARKET: A useful reference for computer networking professionals.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road
by Jamie Flinchbaugh, Andy Carlino, Dennis Pawley

Hitchhikers do not travel a fixed path. They intentionally wander so they can learn and grow along the way. Embarking on the lean journey is similar, there are many roads on which to wander and no single one is right for all. « The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road » reveals the most critical lessons learned over the authors’ combined 30-plus years of exploring the lean highways. One of the book’s lessons from the road is you need to pay attention to where you are and where you are going, just as you do when driving a car. Lean leaders add value by changing things, moving them forward, and producing different results than the day before. To lead, you must go beyond creating a vision. You must develop the vehicle that will deliver it. « The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean » is the vehicle that will help you move beyond the tools and take lean to a self-sustaining and continuously improving level. The book’s 10 chapters cover lean principles and thinking, lean leadership moves, the roadmap for lean transformation, common pitfalls of lean journeys, building an operating system, lean accounting, lean material management, lean in service organizations, and how individuals can apply lean to improve themselves.

Scrum and XP from the Trenches
by Henrik Kniberg, Jeff Sutherland, Mike Cohn

The tricky part to agile software development is that there is no manual telling you exactly how to do it. You have to experiment and continuously adapt the process until it suits your specific situation. This book aims to give you a head start by providing a detailed down-to-earth account of how one Swedish company implemented Scrum and XP with a team of approximately 40 people and how they continuously improved their process over a year’s time. Under the leadership of Henrik Kniberg they experimented with different team sizes, different sprint lengths, different ways of defining « done », different formats for product backlogs and sprint backlogs, different testing strategies, different ways of doing demos, different ways of synchronizing multiple Scrum teams, etc. They also experimented with XP practices – different ways of doing continuous build, pair programming, test driven development, etc, and how to combine this with Scrum.