My Best Software Architecture Books in 2021

With four more recommendations

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Software Architecture is the activity of designing software components and interactions between them. Software is in constant evolution, an architect is responsible for conducting this evolution and maintaining the whole system’s integrity.

The following books are my top 5 as a software srchitect. There is a lot of valuable books in this domain, but let’s start with these.

1. Cloud Strategy — Gregor Hohpe

Cloud Strategy is a must-have for an architect aiming to design a Cloud migration strategy but not only. It covers technical and human organization to move to Cloud.

For me, it’s a must-read for any architect beginner and even experts in designing Cloud applications.

2. Get your hands dirty on Clean Architecture — Tom Hombergs

If you are a Java developer and you need to create a web application by applying Hexagonal Architecture this book is for you.

As the name suggests, the book focuses on providing implementation solutions for clean architecture patterns.

3. Become a better Software Architect – Kai Niklas

If you are asking yourself if software architecture is for you or what skills to have, I think this book can give a lot of insights. The book explains hard and soft skills to have and how relevant they are.

The book can also help software architects to understand and organize their day-to-day work. I enjoyed reading this book and think it can be read also by people who just want to insights on the software architecture process.

4. Designing Data-Intensive Applications – Martin Kleppmann

If data processing matters for you, this one must be on your bookshelf. The book describes best practices and patterns for designing data-oriented applications.

You can find valuable explanations for fundamental concepts like scalability, data models, storage… and patterns for distributed data design and processing.

5. API Design on the Scale of Decades — Bill Doerrfeld

If your goal is to design a REST API, manage the API versioning, microservices, API security, and OpenAPI concepts,… this book will help you.

In addition to API design, the book introduces microservices, API design anti-patterns, API management techniques, and examples from the automotive industry.

Takeaway

In addition to these 5 books, I highly recommend the following ones:

• Clean Architecture — Robert C. Martin
• Site Reliability Engineering — Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy
• 37 Things One Architect Knows About IT Transformation — Gregor Hohpe
• Microservices: Patterns and Applications — Lucas Krause