[markshead]

A few books that I've found useful:

The Goal - Eli Goldratt - It is a novel about optimizing a factory, but it is immensely valuable in thinking through what are the actual constraints on your team's ability to deliver software and how do you fix it without making other things worse. The Phoenix Project is kind of a modern retelling, but I'd start with The Goal.

The Principles of Product Development Flow - Reinersten - Great for thinking deeply about how you deliver value through your system and the tradeoffs you are making in what you choose to focus on next. Once again it isn't specific to software, but very relevant.

The 5 Dysfunctions of Teams - Lencioni - Common team problems and what to do instead.

Influence: Science and Practice - Cialdini - How to get people into agreement so you can move forward--a skill that can be used for both good and evil.

The Little Schemer - Friedman and Felleisen - It is kind of hard to describe why this would be useful, but I felt it made me think more deeply about what it means to program a computer in ways that indirectly supported the topics you mentioned. Or maybe I just happened to work through it at a point in my life when I was growing in those other areas too.

[joeriddles]

The audiobook version of The Goal is the best audiobook I have listened to! Each character is voiced by someone else, which sometimes doesn’t work well for audiobooks, but in this case I think they knocked it out of the park. The main voice actor in particular is phenomenal. I have tried to figure out who voiced Alex, but all credits for the audiobook simply say “ensemble cast” or “unknown”.

[rjha]

+1 for "The Goal" - This book is so timeless!