Goal
The path to "Platform Engineering"
Here is the reading path leading up to this book, derived from its dependencies and ordered from the fundamentals.
The path so far (3 books)
Why read this first: 'The Phoenix Project' lets you experience the chaos of IT operations through a novel, internalizing why DevOps is needed. Once you feel the problem, the royal road is to learn the solutions as systematic practices in 'The DevOps Handbook' by the same author team (Gene Kim et al).
Why read this first: Even if you adopt DevOps as a technical practice, fast flow won't emerge while the org structure stays siloed. Skelton & Pais's 'Team Topologies' presents organizational design that turns Conway's Law to your advantage via four team types and interaction modes, aligning the two wheels of technology and organization.
Why read this first: How to actually launch and run the 'platform team' that 'Team Topologies' advocates is its own discipline. Fournier & Nowland's 'Platform Engineering' covers the design, organization, and product strategy of internal developer platforms, connecting team-structure theory to concrete platform building.