The DIO Recommends…

By Hajar Amidian

As a fairly new member of the Alberta Digital Innovation Office, I have been on the hunt to find some great resources that could help bring me up to speed on “digital innovation”. In this post, I will share some of the great books that have been recommended to me by various members of the DIO team.

• Good Services: How to Design Services that Work, by Louise Downe

This book outlines principles for services that work for users, and is a particularly great resource for those who work in and around public services.

• Digital Transformation at Scale, by Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken, Tom Loosemore

This is essential reading on what digital transformation entails in large organizations, supported by some great case studies.

• Sense and Respond, by Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden

Given ongoing market complexity and uncertainty, this book addresses the necessity of being grounded in technology and software and bridging between organizations and customers.

• Team Topologies, by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais outline successful team patterns and interactions to ensure effective and responsive delivery of value.

• Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity, by Chris Risdon, Patrick Quattlebaum

This is a practical guide on how to create products and services that are both user-focused and aligned with stakeholder expectations in increasingly complicated environments.

• The DevOps Handbook, by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis

This outlines modern DevOps practices and the types of problems they solve in order to take profitability, productivity, and work culture to the next level.

• This is Service Design Doing, by Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider

This comprehensive book offers a common language and a hands-on explanation of how to actually do service design, with just the right mix of theory, practice and business cases.

This is by no means an exhaustive list — please stay tuned as we provide updates! We would also love to hear from you as to what resources you might recommend.