In my view, it can be flicked through in 2-3 hours and while it does have some interesting highlights, it does not say much that is not said better elsewhere, with one important exception.

The one thing I will use from the book is the term of Fitness Functions when describing automated and non-automated guiding measures of quality. These really again are nothing new, but they do provide a neat terminology and sensible core emphasis on how to control risk in an evolving and fast-changing service/product.

There are so many metrics and tools and techniques to choose from as an architect guiding a team to continually change services, there are so many choices on what to emphasize. From reliability metrics from SRE space, through continuous delivery metrics like release cadence and MTTR, to code quality like unit test and functional test coverage to lean startup experiments and A/B testing. It is hard to see the wood through the trees.

By describing fitness functions and somewhat of a framework to classify and to think about them, it provides I think a pragmatic starting point for architects to focus on to then pick the right measures for them to steer their fast-evolving services without becoming too centralized or controlling.

Fitness Functions: ( SLI/SLO/SLA)

* Atomic versus Holistic

* Triggered versus Continual