Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers [Paperback]

Louis Testa (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As the technology leader at a small software company, you need to focus on people, products, processes, and technology as you bring your software to market, while doing your best to put out fires and minimize headaches.

Growing Software is your guide to juggling the day-to-day challenges of running a software company while managing those long-term problems and making sure that your business continues to grow. With practical, hands-on advice, Growing Software will teach you how to build and lead an effective team, define and sell your products, work with everyone from customers to CEOs, and ensure high-quality results.

Instead of learning by trial and error, you'll benefit from author Louis Testa's 20+ years of management experience. Testa combines big-picture advice, specific solutions, and real-life anecdotes to teach you how to:

• Work effectively with your CEO and executive team
• Improve development team efficiency and enthusiasm
• Evaluate your software methodology to improve effectiveness and safeguard against failure
• Use product prototypes to bridge the gap between marketing and engineering
• Defuse technology time bombs

Whether you're new to managing software or newly lost, Growing Software will help you and your growing company thrive.

About the Author

Louis Testa is Senior Engineering Manager at Galois, a small company that specializes in high-assurance software. He received his BS (with honors) in Engineering from Caltech and his MS EE from the University of California, Berkeley. He has managed engineering teams for over 20 years, and his papers have been featured at many technology conferences. He blogs at www.gspractices.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593271832
• ISBN-13: 978-1593271831
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #366,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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  Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > High-Tech

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Pragmatic Guide To Software Development In The Growing Firm, March 26, 2009

By	Ira Laefsky "Ira Laefsky" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers (Paperback)

This uniquely pragmatic guide to managing software development in the startup or growing firm, is an "in-the-trenches book" detailing the necessary,useful and extraneous practices, tools, and documentation which govern the successful management of software projects. The author is both a graduate of Caltech and Berkeley and the possessor of 20 years of hard earned experience in the management of technology and software development projects. He provides templates and spreadsheets for the documentation his methodology requires. He is an advocate of moderate but carefully scoped tools and documentation, often preferring (on the basis of experience) simple spreadsheets and Gantt charts over more sophisticated project management tools. This book offers a careful balance between the best communication, management and coaching methods, for members of the software team, interaction with marketing and CXO executives and the software and paper tools which contribute to the success of a software development effort. Caveats and advice such as, "When the Sales Team Overpromises", and "Where the Waterfall model is better than Agile methods" speak to the author's experience with the real world issues of technology development in the growing firm. This is "the book" you need for successful management of software projects in the startup or moderately sized firm.

--Ira Laefsky

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Focused on small companies, June 9, 2009

By	Krzysztof Satola "adobers.org" (Poland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers (Paperback)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Primer for the New Software Manager, April 5, 2009

By	John Jacobson (Riverside CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers (Paperback)

This is a great book! It is written for the new development manager, perhaps temporarily inserted into a management position because there is no one else to do it. With the new position come new responsibilities, new pressures, a different work flow . . . The situation can be overwhelming. This book provides a proven approach to dealing with these issues in an organized and practical way, and provides many real-world examples of both success and failure.

The book is sectioned into these topics:

Development team
Product and technology
Outside of engineering
Making work flow, process, projects and qualtiy
Planning for the future

The author deals with company size in discussing planning for successful projects, from the one person company to the company with over 100 employees.

There is a strong emphasis on developing people skills, learning the culture of the company, and discovering the process of decision making in the company. Concrete examples of the requirements for planning projects, including technical tools that are helpful, are scattered throughout the book. One of the features of the book I particularly appreciated was the "real life accounts" scattered through the book, statements from software engineers discussing situations they'd faced in companies, and the pros and cons of how they were handled.

Here is a listing of the chapters, this gives an idea of the breadth of information contained in this book.

Getting started
Managing a development team
Creating an effective development team
Growing a software team
Defining the product
Driving releases
Evaluating your tools and methods
Assessing your technology
Working with your company
Working with the CEO and the executive team
Listening to your customers
Project Estimating
Starting a project
Project execution and tracking
Designing a software development process
Process improvement
Understanding quality assurance
Setting the direction
Product roadmap and strategy

This book would be a great resource for anyone involved in administration in a company, from a newly recruited team leader to the CEO. There are so many practical issues clearly stated with suggested resolutions there isn't room to detail them all.

There is an 11 page index. There are detailed subheadings for each chapter, which makes finding a particular section or topic very easy. Each chapter has references for those who desire to do additional research into a topic.

The author has a new web site to support the book, http://www.gspractices.com/. Short discussions regarding resolution of management difficulties are posted on the web site.

Highly recommended. One of the best books I've read on the topic.