Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility

A great best practices book on integration. The first part provides description of the business value of Lean. It introduces the core concepts. As a manager that doesn’t need all the details you could just read this part and you can get a good grasp of the ideas presented.

The second part translates the lean principles from the world of manufacturing to the world of systems integration. It has great case studies that shows the principles applied in a real world context.

Part three of the book provides a “how to” guide. This can be used as a reference and as such is a great desk-top reference manual. This book is great and a must read for all technology and business practitioners and innovators.

Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA

Great reference (not a book that I read front to back) on Web Service Design from Thomas Erl and his co-authors. This book focuses exclusively on the contract part of the service. Due to the depth it is a extensive resource to use besides others. The book is filled with extensive examples on how to meet the goals of SOA properly using contract design.

Via the site of the publisher and on iTunes are additional service design podcasts by the authors of the book. Could be a great resource to start with.

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

This is a great book on problem solving, extremely useful and in a sense thought provoking. It structures problem-solving into a six by five visual codex. This makes sense; you can literally see the evolution of the thought processes and the development of the insights take shape through the pages. Fun read as well.

• The Nine Boxes – Interviewing technique to help you understand problems and opportunities faced by others.
• Tools, tricks, and tips for great retrospectives can be found in the book: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
• The classic on The Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Optimized Production Technology (OPT): The Goal. Very interesting book on ongoing improvement written in an easy to read novel style.

Besides these the online library of one of my colleagues gives some other great hints. You might also like to read his selection of 10 from ‘Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines’.

Here is the table of contents with the links to the free chapters:

Part I: Introduction
1. BPM – Background
2. Standards in BPM
3. BPM Suite 11g – Overview

Part II: Mastering Oracle BPM 11g

4. Quick Learners Guide to Oracle BPM 11g
5. Business Process Modeling and Implementation using BPMN 2.0
6. Mastering Business Rules
7. Advanced Human Tasks
8. Developing Rich User Interfaces for BPM with ADF

Part III: Essentials of Oracle BPM Methodology

9. Planning a BPM Adoption
10. Strategic Analysis, Process Selection and Design
11. Technical Design and Project Delivery Strategies