I often find myself talking to experienced and new managers about things I’ve read or heard. Of course I can never remember everything so this post aims to capture some of my “go-to” resources about management and leadership. This list is naturally skewed towards technical/software leadership but a lot of it crosses over into other domains too.
I’ll update this post as and when I read/listen to new things or remember things I’ve read before!
Books
- Behind Closed Doors - an excellent introductory text for people making their first steps into team leadership.
- Peopleware - hard to believe this is almost 30 years old. So much good advice for all levels of leaders on software projects.
- Management 3.0 - covers a wide range of management topics from an agile perspective.
- Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - fascinating studies and a strong message (autonomy, mastery, purpose). Also available as a 10 minute video for the time poor.
- To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others - not as well known as Drive but as important in my view.
- Turn the ship around - this works best for senior leaders but everyone will appreciate the brilliance of the Leader-Leader model.
- What did you say? The art of giving and receiving feedback - probably one of the hardest things any manager has to do is give and receive feedback but it’s essential.
- The Servant as Leader - the concept of servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf 45 years ago but it’s as relevant now as it was then. This essay is available as a free pdf.
- Tribal Leadership - another book that senior leaders should read. It’s very easy to follow in its progression through the five stages of tribal culture.
- Five dysfunctions of a team - while the story in this book focuses on a C-suite, the same principles can apply to any leadership team. The model is a good one to diagnose a dysfunctional leadership team.
- The No Asshole Rule - having a civilised workplace would be a given, you’d hope. But, as Bob Sutton shows, that’s not the case. A great case for fixing toxic environments.
- Basically anything listed on the Luna MBA list. This one will keep you going for a long time.
Specific posts/articles
- This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers - a well structured approach to mentoring new managers.
- “What does a VP of Engineering do, again?” - for those aiming to make it to a role leading leaders, this is a good overview of what that means for an engineering organisation.
- On Managing Developers - another interesting take on what your role is when you’re no longer the engineer.
- The Silent Company Killer - a great description of how bad leadership feels.
- Everyone can be a Leader - this is an important point and makes the distinction between management and leadership.
- What it takes to be a great technical leader - a good list of actions that a good technical lead will do.
- The Kata of leader development - to be read in conjunction with (or after) Turn The Ship Around (see book section, above). Applying the concept of the Improvement Kata.
- Your most important skill: Empathy - we often get lost in the details and forget that we’re all humans with human feelings.
- 5 myths of great workplaces - especially about happy teams and toys being essential. They’re not.
- Growth of human factors in application development - from 1995, this article by Alistair Cockburn describes what was then a novel approach (studying human interaction as part of software development).
- 5 simple ways to bring out the best in your people - they seem simple and common sense. But they’re so easy to let slip.
- Bootstrapping a team ( people, purpose & process) - three part series on setting up a new (or changed) team. Practical exercises and tools to get a team through the forming process.
- Developer turned Manager - Great insight from a new manager at StackExchange. Especially focusing on trust as the first thing to do.
Blogs (general)
- Rands - otherwise known as Michael Lopp (currently head of engineering at Pinterest).
- NOOP.nl - the blog of Jurgen Appelo (author of Management 3.0)
- Managing Product Development - Johanna Rothman’s blog covers a wide spectrum of topics of interest to those developing software products.
- Lindsay Holmwood - an engineering manager and organiser of DevOps events from Sydney, Australia.
- Kylie Hunt - wants to be a Chief Happiness Officer and writes about making great workplaces.
- Rich Rogers - leads engineering at Hitachi Data Systems. Often posts great articles on engineering leadership.
- Steve Hayes - co-founder of Cogent, agile advocate and provider of great tweets.
- David Marquet - author (see book section, above), former submarine captain and inspiration.
- Bob Sutton - author (see book section, above) and professor at Stanford.
- Dr Jason Fox - expert on motivation and also very amusing.
- Jason Yip - Agile Coach at Spotify; like standing in front of a firehose of interesting content.
- Nigel Dalton - a lot of what I read came directly or indirectly from Nigel.
- Esther Derby - expert on organisations and how they work (or don’t).
- Johanna Rothman - management guru and author.
Podcasts
- Manager Tools - so much content here; particularly the manager tools “basics” series.
- Feel - I have to include this one as it’s mine. Six episodes on culture, motivation, influence and more.