12 RESOURCES ✣

Books.

A working bibliography for serious DevRel practitioners and people considering the field. Annotated rather than exhaustive.

ENTRY · 4 MIN · 1,023 WORDS

A working bibliography for serious DevRel practitioners and people considering the field. Annotated rather than exhaustive.

Core DevRel canon

Mary Thengvall, The Business Value of Developer Relations (Apress, 2018)

The discipline’s first systematic treatment of return on investment. Thengvall maps DevRel activities to business outcomes, provides frameworks for measurement, and arms practitioners with the vocabulary needed for executive conversations. The single book to start with if you have not read it.

Caroline Lewko & James Parton, Developer Relations: How to Build and Grow a Successful Developer Program (Apress, 2021)

Practical, operational guide to building a DevRel program from scratch. Introduces the Four Pillars framework (Education, Marketing, Success, Programs) that has become widely adopted. Useful for new program leaders.

Jono Bacon, The Art of Community (O’Reilly, 2nd edition 2012)

Still the canonical text on building communities, technical or otherwise. Predates much of modern DevRel but defines its community-management vocabulary. Worth re-reading periodically.

Jono Bacon, People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams (HarperCollins, 2019)

Bacon’s updated framework for community building in the modern era. Practical, with implementation playbooks.

Christian Heilmann, The Developer Advocacy Handbook

Open-source, available online. Heilmann’s practical guide to the day-to-day work of developer advocacy. Predates much of the modern field’s professional infrastructure but the core craft advice is still excellent.

SlashData / Developer Marketing Alliance, Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide (multiple editions)

Comprehensive industry reference with data from SlashData’s research. Used as a textbook for the Developer Marketing Certified and Developer Relations Certified courses.

Foundational adjacent reading

Guy Kawasaki, Selling the Dream (HarperCollins, 1991)

Kawasaki’s account of evangelism, written from his Apple Macintosh era. Origin text for the discipline; reads as a 1990s artefact in places but the core ideas about evangelism, advocacy, and authentic passion still apply.

Stephen O’Grady, The New Kingmakers: How Developers Conquered the World (O’Reilly, 2013)

The strategic thesis underlying every modern DevRel investment: developers have become the central force in technology procurement. Short, sharp, essential context for the function’s existence.

Richard Millington, Buzzing Communities (Smart Village Press, 2012)

Practical community-building manual, well-regarded across the field.

Modern strategic framing for community as a primary growth motion, complementary to PLG.

Adjacent: Engineering and developer-experience

Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim, Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps (IT Revolution, 2018)

The canonical reference for measuring software-delivery performance. Introduces DORA metrics. Essential reading for any DevRel professional whose product touches DevOps or platform engineering.

The DevOps Handbook (Gene Kim et al., IT Revolution, 2016; 2nd ed. 2021)

Foundational text on DevOps practice. Useful for DevRel teams whose audience is DevOps engineers.

Will Larson, Staff Engineer (2021) and Elegant Puzzle (2019)

Engineering leadership classics. Worth reading because many DevRel decisions sit at the intersection of engineering leadership and community work.

Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path (O’Reilly, 2017)

Engineering management reference; useful for DevRel leaders managing teams of advocates.

Open source and community

Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1999)

Foundational essay/book on open-source development models. Required context for DevRel work touching open source.

Karl Fogel, Producing Open Source Software (O’Reilly, 2005; updated online)

Practical guide to running open-source projects. Many of its lessons apply to community-led developer products generally.

Nadia Eghbal (Asparouhova), Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software (Stripe Press, 2020)

Influential analysis of open-source sustainability and the social dynamics of public production. Essential reading for OSS-adjacent DevRel.

Forge Your Future with Open Source (Christian Heilmann; or similar guides for first-time contributors)

For DevRel teams running contributor programs or student programs.

Marketing, content, and craft

April Dunford, Obviously Awesome (2019)

Positioning fundamentals. Useful when DevRel is asked to participate in messaging conversations.

Mark Schaefer, Marketing Rebellion (2019) / Belonging to the Brand (2023)

Community-driven marketing perspectives.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well (HarperPerennial, 7th ed. 2006)

Craft of writing prose. Required reading for anyone writing developer-facing content for a living.

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

Still useful as a reference.

David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1983)

A counterweight reference; some of the principles are timeless even when the contexts are dated.

Adjacent: AI engineering

Chip Huyen, Designing Machine Learning Systems (O’Reilly, 2022)

Reference text for the ML-systems era.

Chip Huyen, AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models (O’Reilly, 2024)

Practical reference for the AI-engineering era; foundational for DevRel professionals at AI-adjacent companies.

Andriy Burkov, The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book (2019)

Compact ML primer.

Shawn Wang (swyx) et al., contributions across Latent Space and elsewhere

Less a single book than a body of work shaping how the AI Engineer identity is articulated.

Sales, customer success, and business

Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things (HarperBusiness, 2014)

Useful context for founder-DevRel conversations.

Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm (1991; updated multiple times)

Classic on technology adoption curves. Still relevant for understanding where developer products are in their adoption lifecycle.

Lincoln Murphy and various, customer-success references

Adjacent to developer success.

Reports and surveys (not books, but essential)

SlashData, State of the Developer Nation and State of Developer Relations reports. Twice-yearly.
Stack Overflow Developer Survey. Annual.
GitHub Octoverse. Annual.
JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem report. Annual.
DX State of Developer Experience report. Annual.
Atlassian State of Developer Experience report (started 2024).
HashiCorp State of Cloud Strategy Survey.
CNCF Annual Survey.

These are the primary data sources for industry conversations.

How to use this list

Start with Thengvall and Lewko-Parton.
Add Bacon for community.
Add Heilmann for the day-to-day craft.
Read O’Grady for the strategic thesis.
Pick up Accelerate if your product touches DevOps; Working in Public if your product touches OSS.
Add Chip Huyen if your product touches AI.

Read survey reports continuously, not just when you need numbers.