Customer Reviews

Managing Software Maniacs: Finding, Managing, and Rewarding a Winning Development Team

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I was very exicted to receive this book having heard great things about it. The author has actually written two books, Principles of Software Development Leadership, and Managing Software Maniacs. In both books he addresses the full life cycle of software development from a business owner or manager (in my opinion).

Various areas are addressed including corporate culture, staff, methodology, retaining staff, annd the overall integration of the various pieces need to have a rapid development environment.

One thing that stood out to me that was especially helpful was the face that you could apply a lot of the priniciples to any type of rapid product development environment (software or otherwise). Too many companies look at activities, planning everything out way in advance, then dealing with all the changes and scope creep, and not looking at the long term capital investment of your people.

His two books addresses that and more....

Regards,

Tony Johnson, MBA, PMP, PgMP
CEO & Founder
Crosswind PM Inc.

Most books on development focus on techniques of developing products but few focus on organizing, motivating, planning around the teams who do the work. (one such book is Joel Spolsky's 'Smart and gets things done.') This book isn't about building better products--altho it will help do this; it's really about helping OTHERS develop better products.

Which is better? Cubicles or team pods? How does a manager provide oversight in agile without micromanaging. Should QA be on the team or external to it? Ken has the answers.

If you're looking for a book on how to be a dev lead of a small team, this is a good start but perhaps there are others. But if you need to know how to be a leader of MANY dev teams, this is the book you need.

Ken's insights proved very useful in my research (we reference it in our latest AntiPatterns book). I especially enjoyed Ken's take on the popular "cubicles" versus offices debate. I recommend this as one of the many books software managers should read.

After reading this book there was only one thing I took away with me. Ken Whitaker's ideal priority list for making decisions. His discussion on the why is most illuminating.

The rest of the book is somewhat wooly. I felt that for my needs (looking to move to technical lead) Rapid Development was a more worthwhile read.