Building software is hard. Running an effective software engineering organization is harder. Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization is a guide to help engineering leaders and their teams stay effective as everything around them changes.
It zeroes in on the three things that matter most as AI reshapes how software is built: a relentless focus on business outcomes, a clear view of the productivity of your teams and systems, and a thoughtful approach to the experience of building software at your company.
Whether you’re a leader, a manager, or anyone invested in seeing your team or organization improve, this third edition of Build provides the roadmap you need to start making meaningful progress.
What readers are saying
Getting to work in a high performing org is a life changing experience for any software engineer, and a rare one, because high performing orgs are hard to build and hard to sustain. Rebecca and Otto are two of the few people in the world who could write this book, having not only built and worked on these teams but observed countless others in the wild. The work is hard, but not impossible, and it is work worth doing. This book is for a map for the people who care.
Charity Majors
Co-Founder & CTO, Honeycomb
The section on AI and developer experience is unusually honest about what building software feels like right now — review load, parallel-track pressure, what happens to early-career engineers when AI absorbs the work that used to build codebase familiarity. A practical, unusually direct guide for any engineering org still finding its footing.
Helen Greul
SVP of Engineering, PolyAI
Effective software organizations are not just about producing more code faster, but about aligning business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience. I especially liked how the book treats AI as an amplifier of existing organizational strengths and weaknesses, rather than as a shortcut around the fundamentals. That feels both grounded and timely.
Frederic Calvez
Director of Product & Engineering Operations, Smartly
In Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization, Rebecca Murphey and Otto Hilska help illustrate that “building software” is actually shorthand for “building teams that build software.” They’ve lived this, and they help teams realize it every day, using metrics and insights to improve coordination, communication, culture, and — yes — tooling.
Nathen Harvey
DORA Lead, Google Cloud
AI is both exposing the limits of our engineering effectiveness and changing the way we work. As a result, it’s more important than ever to understand the fundamentals of engineering delivery, not just a few practices. Build provides a comprehensive overview to give you this understanding and some great references to dig deeper on the problems most relevant to your organization.
Rob Zuber
CTO, CircleCI
Getting to work in a high performing org is a life changing experience for any software engineer, and a rare one, because high performing orgs are hard to build and hard to sustain. Rebecca and Otto are two of the few people in the world who could write this book, having not only built and worked on these teams but observed countless others in the wild. The work is hard, but not impossible, and it is work worth doing. This book is for a map for the people who care.
Charity Majors
Co-Founder & CTO, Honeycomb
The section on AI and developer experience is unusually honest about what building software feels like right now — review load, parallel-track pressure, what happens to early-career engineers when AI absorbs the work that used to build codebase familiarity. A practical, unusually direct guide for any engineering org still finding its footing.
Helen Greul
SVP of Engineering, PolyAI
Effective software organizations are not just about producing more code faster, but about aligning business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience. I especially liked how the book treats AI as an amplifier of existing organizational strengths and weaknesses, rather than as a shortcut around the fundamentals. That feels both grounded and timely.
Frederic Calvez
Director of Product & Engineering Operations, Smartly
In Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization, Rebecca Murphey and Otto Hilska help illustrate that “building software” is actually shorthand for “building teams that build software.” They’ve lived this, and they help teams realize it every day, using metrics and insights to improve coordination, communication, culture, and — yes — tooling.
Nathen Harvey
DORA Lead, Google Cloud
AI is both exposing the limits of our engineering effectiveness and changing the way we work. As a result, it’s more important than ever to understand the fundamentals of engineering delivery, not just a few practices. Build provides a comprehensive overview to give you this understanding and some great references to dig deeper on the problems most relevant to your organization.
Rob Zuber
CTO, CircleCI
Getting to work in a high performing org is a life changing experience for any software engineer, and a rare one, because high performing orgs are hard to build and hard to sustain. Rebecca and Otto are two of the few people in the world who could write this book, having not only built and worked on these teams but observed countless others in the wild. The work is hard, but not impossible, and it is work worth doing. This book is for a map for the people who care.
Charity Majors
Co-Founder & CTO, Honeycomb
The section on AI and developer experience is unusually honest about what building software feels like right now — review load, parallel-track pressure, what happens to early-career engineers when AI absorbs the work that used to build codebase familiarity. A practical, unusually direct guide for any engineering org still finding its footing.
Helen Greul
SVP of Engineering, PolyAI
Effective software organizations are not just about producing more code faster, but about aligning business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience. I especially liked how the book treats AI as an amplifier of existing organizational strengths and weaknesses, rather than as a shortcut around the fundamentals. That feels both grounded and timely.
Frederic Calvez
Director of Product & Engineering Operations, Smartly
In Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization, Rebecca Murphey and Otto Hilska help illustrate that “building software” is actually shorthand for “building teams that build software.” They’ve lived this, and they help teams realize it every day, using metrics and insights to improve coordination, communication, culture, and — yes — tooling.
Nathen Harvey
DORA Lead, Google Cloud
AI is both exposing the limits of our engineering effectiveness and changing the way we work. As a result, it’s more important than ever to understand the fundamentals of engineering delivery, not just a few practices. Build provides a comprehensive overview to give you this understanding and some great references to dig deeper on the problems most relevant to your organization.
Goodreads
