Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers – recenzja

As you all probably know results matter. If you are a development manager in a small, growing company, you will be judged by the work and results of your development team. Your team must deliver quality software on time on budget and that software will have to please your customers.

At first this book seems to be like other management books but one thing makes it really different. Growing Software is written for managers working in small companies. In fact it is about managing software engineers in a small firm. Luis Testa shows many interesting aspects of working in small environments as oppossed to corporate ones. In small companies development managers have more influence on processes and workflows and as a result in a product definition. In small companies approaches must be systematic, simple and relatively straighforward. This book is about how to start and avoid common pitfals.

I work as a software architect managing software development team in a small company. For me this book is a nice, well written guide. It is an advice offer about how to succeed when faced with diverse challenges. It is about managing techniques, professional ethics and building relationships with other company’s sections like Marketing or Sales. It also helps to understand and care about relations with other managers, CEO and team members.

As I said earlier there are many good books about managing engineering teams and processes of these teams but this book’s greatest value is focusing on how things work in small companies that want to succeed. I definetely recommend this book especially if you manage an engineering team in a small company.