Building a DevOps career is about much more than the day job. To be successful, you need to keep learning, improving your skills, and staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies. In this blog, we will share our best recommendations for DevOps Director resources. This includes books, community groups, and cloud governance tools.
Fortunately, there are lots of resources to help you power up your knowledge:
- DevOps Books – deepen your knowledge and learn from experts
- Community groups – share your own experience and get practical tips
- Cloud Webinars – explore emerging technologies and learn about what’s coming next
Top DevOps Books Every DevOps Director Should Read in 2025
The right DevOps books can help any DevOps Director or future leader improve their skills. This includes topics like infrastructure as code and cloud governance. You can learn a lot from books. They can help you understand infrastructure as code. You can also improve your leadership skills. Additionally, you can master cloud governance. They go beyond just daily tasks. These titles include hands-on guides for automation, team structure frameworks, and cloud compliance strategies. They are written in practical and engaging styles that help you learn better.
To get you started, here are five must-read books for aspiring DevOps leaders.
📘 Why DevOps Directors Should Read The Phoenix Project
Recommended by: Jonathann Zenou I DevOps Director I Windward
- The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win
- The Phoenix Project is legendary for bringing DevOps to life through the engaging story of IT Manager Bill, who is up against time and budget as he takes on the business-critical Phoenix Project. Sure to resonate with anyone who has worked in IT, this fast-paced read will help you improve your own organization’s IT.
- Author Gene Kim has gone on to give software development similar treatment in The Unicorn Project, which is another enlightening read.
📘 Site Reliability Engineering
Recommended by: Faheem Memon | Sr Platform Engineer Sr Manager | Comcast
- Site Reliability Engineering by Niall Richard Murphy, Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff
- Google’s blueprint for running production systems reliably at scale
- Mainly focus on Balancing operational demands with scale
📗 Terraform: Up & Running – Scalable Concepts Testing
Recommended by: Ori Yemini I CTO & Co-Founder I ControlMonkey
- Terraform: Up & Running by Yevgeniy Brikman
- Hands-on Terraform reference for scalable, production-ready infrastructure
- Concepts remain relevant beyond Terraform 1.0 – especially around scale, testing, and modularity.
- Many tips and ideas for team collaboration in Terraform workflows
📕 Lean DevOps
Recommended by: Alexandre Cravid I DevOps & Cloud Architect I Celfocus
- Lean DevOps by Robert Benefield
- Practical strategies for building DevOps into enterprise delivery — without slowing teams down or losing control.
- Mainly focus on Creating flow across dev and ops without overengineering. Reduces delivery friction while preserving governance and stability.
📙 Team Topologies: DevOps Team Structure for Directors
Recommended by: Aharon Twizer I CEO & Co-Founder I ControlMonkey
- Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
- Now that you know how to measure software delivery, learn how to build and manage the right team to deliver it.
- Manuel Pais and Matthew Skelton offer their consultancy expertise in this step-by-step guide to organizational design and team interaction.
- The book offer a range of different team types and interaction patterns so you can choose the approach that relates most closely to your organization and take practical steps to implement it.
📗 Accelerate: A Must-Read DevOps Book for Data-Driven Leaders
- Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
- How does software delivery impact business performance and drive business value? In this book, author Gene Kim teams up with Jez Humble and Dr. Nicole Forsgren. Dr. Forsgren helped create the DORA metrics. These metrics are important for measuring how well software delivery teams perform. The book also shows where to invest to make improvements.
📘 Infrastructure as Code: Strategic IaC for DevOps Leadership
- Infrastructure as Code: Designing and Delivering Dynamic Systems for the Cloud Age
- Kief Morris has updated his 2016 IaC guide for 2025. The new edition recognizes the risks of infrastructure sprawl and the need to consolidate cloud-based systems to support sustainable growth while managing costs.
- Exploring core concepts, infrastructure architecture, patterns for building architecture and infrastructure automation via tools like Terraform, this is a timely update for DevOps engineers looking to build strategic knowledge and support their business to develop resilient, sustainable and scalable cloud infrastructure.
- Available now on pre-order, launching 22 April 2025
📒 Cloud Governance Book: Best Practices for DevOps Directors
- Cloud Governance: Basics and Practice
- Improve your cloud governance knowledge with this practical, user-friendly guide that provides a comprehensive understanding of governance practices tailored to the cloud era. It covers frameworks, compliance, security, and cost management strategies essential for managing cloud environments effectively.
- Authors Steven Mezzio and Meredith Stein focus on aligning governance with business objectives while maintaining flexibility and scalability in cloud operations. Great for underlining the link between practical cloud governance and the wider corporate governance environment.
Each of these books helps you grow as a DevOps Director. They give you the knowledge to lead, scale, and manage cloud infrastructure well
Top DevOps Communities for DevOps Directors and Engineers
There’s nothing better than learning from people who are already in the roles you aspire to. Community groups often offer a realistic, warts-and-all perspective on DevOps careers. Here are some of the most popular groups across different platforms:
- DevOps on Reddit: Now fifteen years old and with more than 386k members r/devops covers “everything DevOps”. From trouble-shooting technical issues to career advice and salary comparisons, you’ll find the unvarnished truth here.
- Three DevOps Groups to Join on LinkedIn:
- DevOps and SRE Discussions is an active public group whose 251k members aim to cover quality discussions and resources around DevOps, SRE, MLOPS, Gitops, CNCF initiatives and cloud platforms.
- DevOps is tightly focused on networking, discussion and news around DevOps, CI/CD, Automated Security and Modern Infrastructure.
- Cloud Native Application Delivery and DevOps is another popular group offering resource for people managing and deploying software in the cloud.
- Slack communities for DevOps Engineers:
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- DevOps Chat: A well-moderated Slack group where professionals discuss various DevOps topics, as well as jobs and events related to DevOps.
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- SweetOps: A collaborative community for engineers focusing on DevOps best practices and tools.
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- KodeKloud Community: A popular platform for knowledge sharing and guidance
- Dedicated communities for DevOps Engineers:
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- DZone: Join 2 million developers in the DZone community that includes news, articles, research, webinars and other free resources created for software engineering professionals.
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- Platformengineering.org: Here is another community packed with resources for aspiring and experienced DevOps professionals.
Best Webinars for DevOps Directors: Leadership & Cloud Governance
If you have an hour to spare, webinars are a great way for a DevOps Director to stay current on tools and future trends. Sign up with the following to get the latest:
- DevOps.com: A real treasure trove that’s curated to cover a vast range of topics from technical to managerial, including news, opinion and best practice primers. The vendor-sponsored webinars also give you insight into what key vendors are introducing, which can be useful as you develop your specific tech skills.
- Platform Engineering YouTube channel: You’ll find a bunch of useful webinars ranging from Platform Engineering 101 to “How to hack your manager” if you join the 26k subscribers to Platform Engineering’s dedicated channel.
- DZone: Check out DZone’s library of on-demand webinars, fireside chats and roundtables.
Continuous Learning for DevOps Directors: Stay Ahead with Tools & Trends
As you pursue your DevOps career, you’ll need to maintain and add to your skillset, and stay up-to-date with new technologies, techniques and timesavers that emerge.
In more advanced positions, you will be evaluated on your ability to lead your team, the success of your projects, and your effectiveness in managing costs and risks. It’s essential to leverage all your acquired knowledge and ensure you are utilizing the appropriate tools to enhance your cloud governance and team management strategies.
ControlMonkey is your DevOps career partner, helping automate and enforce cloud governance, providing visibility over security and compliance risks associated with cloud misconfigurations and drift, and ensuring the cloud environment is operating at maximum efficiency and optimum performance. Add ControlMonkey to your toolkit today. Book a demo.
💡 Looking to become a DevOps Director? Don’t miss our full guide on how to become one
