Notes to a Software Team Leader


Book Description

Are you an architect? Scrum Master? team leader? project manager? If you are any of these, you will find that leadership, done right, is a very tough job. This book deals with the hard parts. Not with tools, but with people. Here is the manifesto that drives this book: For us as team leaders, the goal and the way we measure our work is the overall growth in skills of self-organization and self-maintenance in each member of our team and the team as a whole. To that end: We accept that the team's needs from us change continuously based on their skills for handling the current reality of work, so we embrace a continuously changing leadership style over a one-style-fits-all leadership approach. We believe in challenging ourselves and our teams to always get better, so: * We create slack time for the team to learn and be challenged. * We embrace taking risks for our team over staying safe. * We embrace fear and discomfort while learning new skills over keeping people within their comfort zone. * We embrace experimentation as a constant practice over maintaining the status quo: * With people * With tools * With processes * With the environment * We believe our core practice is leading people, not wielding machines, so: * We embrace spending more time with our team than in meetings. * We embrace treating software problems as people problems. * We learn people skills and communication techniques. About the notes The second part of this book allows a peek into the minds of some of the best leaders, consultants, and managers as they give advice to a new team leader. Hear from Johanna Rothman, Kevlin Henney, Dan North, Uncle Bob Martin, and many others about the one thing they would like to teach you if you ever become a team leader, Scrum Master, project manager, or architect.




Elastic Leadership


Book Description

Summary Elastic leadership is a framework and philosophy that can help you as you manage day-to-day and long-term challenges and strive to create the elusive self-organizing team. It is about understanding that your leadership needs to change based on which phase you discover that your team is in. This book provides you with a set of values, techniques, and practices to use in your leadership role. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Your team looks to you for guidance. You have to mediate heated debates. The team is constantly putting out fires instead of doing the right things, the right way. Everyone seems to want to do things correctly, but nobody seems to be doing so. This is where leaders get stuck. It's time to get unstuck! Elastic leadership is a novel approach that helps you adapt your leadership style to the phase your team is in, so you can stay in step as things change. About the Book Elastic Leadership is a practical, experience-driven guide to team leadership. In it, you'll discover a set of values, techniques, and practices to lead your team to success. First, you'll learn what elastic leadership is and explore the phases of this results-oriented framework. Then, you'll see it in practice through stories, anecdotes, and advice provided by successful leaders in a variety of disciplines, all annotated by author and experienced team leader, Roy Osherove. What's Inside Understanding why people do what they do Effective coaching Influencing team members and managers Advice from industry leaders About the Reader This book is for anyone with a year or more of experience working on a team as a lead or team member. About the Author Roy Osherove is the DevOps process lead for the West Coast at EMC, based in California. He is also the author of The Art of Unit Testing (Manning, 2013) and Enterprise DevOps. He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of leadership, unit testing, test-driven development, and continuous-delivery automation. He frequently speaks at international conferences on these topics and others. Table of Contents PART 1 - UNDERSTANDING ELASTIC LEADERSHIP Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto Matching leadership styles to team phases Dealing with bus factors PART 2 - SURVIVAL MODE Dealing with survival mode PART 3 - LEARNING MODE Learning to learn Commitment language Growing people PART 4 - SELF-ORGANIZATION MODE Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization Influence patterns The Line Manager Manifesto PART 5 - NOTES TO A SOFTWARE TEAM LEADER Feeding back Channel conflict into learning It's probably not a technical problem Review the code Document your air, food, and water Appraisals and agile don't play nicely Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader Introduction to the Core Protocols Change your mind: your product is your team Leadership and the mature team Spread your workload Making your team manage their own work Go see, ask why, show respect Keep developers happy, reap high-quality work Stop doing their work Write code, but not too much Evolving from manager to leader Affecting the pace of change Proximity management Babel Fish You're the lead, not the know-it-all Actions speak louder than words




Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager


Book Description

Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does "it" even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us.




An Elegant Puzzle


Book Description

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.




The Art of Leadership


Book Description

Many people think leadership is a higher calling that resides exclusively with a select few who practice and preach big, complex leadership philosophies. But as this practical book reveals, what’s most important for leadership is principled consistency. Time and again, small things done well build trust and respect within a team. Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. Lopp has been speaking and writing about this topic for over a decade and now maintains a Slack leadership channel with over 13,000 members. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders—as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.




The Manager's Path


Book Description

Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal—especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes you through each stage in the journey from engineer to technical manager. From mentoring interns to working with senior staff, you’ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path. This book is ideal whether you’re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization. Begin by exploring what you expect from a manager Understand what it takes to be a good mentor, and a good tech lead Learn how to manage individual members while remaining focused on the entire team Understand how to manage yourself and avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders Manage multiple teams and learn how to manage managers Learn how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams




Everyone Deserves a Great Manager


Book Description

Learn how to become a great manager in this Wall Street Journal bestseller from the leadership experts at FranklinCovey. The essential guide when you make the challenging yet rewarding leap to manager. Based on nearly a decade of research on what makes managers successful, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager includes field-tested tips, techniques, and the top advice from hundreds of thousands of managers all over the world. Organized by the four main roles every manager fills, this must-read guide focuses on how to lead yourself, people, teams, and change to success. No matter what your current problem or time constraint, pick up a helpful tip in ten minutes or glean an entire skillset by developing people skills and clarity through straightforward advice. Dive into common managerial tasks like one-on-ones, giving feedback, delegating, hiring, building team culture, and leading remote teams, with useful worksheets and a list of questions for your next interview. An approachable, engaging style using real-world stories, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager provides the blueprint for becoming the great manager every team deserves.




Leadership, Teamwork, and Trust


Book Description

Every business is a software business, and every business can profit from improved software processes Leadership, Teamwork, and Trust discusses the critical importance of knowledge work to the success of modern organizations. It explains concrete and necessary steps for reshaping the way in which software development, specifically, is conducted. A sequel to Humphrey's influential Winning with Software, this book presents new and copious data to reinforce his widely adopted methods for transforming knowledge work into a significant and sustainable competitive advantage, thereby realizing remarkable returns. Humphrey addresses here the broader business community--executives and senior managers who must recognize that today, every business is a software business.




Software Leadership


Book Description

Software and project management consultant Murray Cantor discusses how to be a good manager and how to build a competitive software team. The text is intended to be accessible to managers with little software background as well as those with extensive experience. A sampling of topics includes software architecture, developing products, improving the efficiency of the organization, the Rational Unified Process, and team leadership. c. Book News Inc.




Debugging Teams


Book Description

In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.