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The Engineering Protocol Stack

A Layered Model for Engineering Leadership

The Engineering Protocol Stack
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-09-17
Guillem Fernandez

As an engineer you are valued most of the time by your technical skills. The time you have to use those technical skills is limited. You can find many books about increasing productivity, this is not one of them. Booster skills is about doing what you do more efficiently and getting the best output of what you already know how to do.

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About

About

About the Book

Engineers often talk about the difference between what we call Soft Skills and Hard Skills.

From my perspective, understanding that both are skills, their use is entirely different.

A company hires us because of our hard skills, but in most cases, it is our level in soft skills what makes it possible. That makes the difference in the perception that we transmit about our work.

The concept of soft skills is so wide and vague that I prefer to talk about booster skills instead.

There are great books about increasing your productivity. The concept of growing productivity makes me think of procedures to produce more, not to produce better.

As engineers, we shouldn't focus on producing more units but on delivering better, more robust, and maintainable outputs.

For this reason, I like to talk about enhancement instead of productivity. We can't put more time in our days, at least we shouldn't, but we can improve the way we do the things we do.

This book is the result of more than twenty years of work in development.

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Non-FictionCareerComputers and ProgrammingEngineering Management

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Author

About the Author

Guillem Fernandez

Hice Informática y he estado desarrollando aplicaciones durante los últimos veinte años. Soy una persona muy afortunada, ya que he sido capaz de convertir mi pasión en mi trabajo, que creo firmemente es algo que todos deberíamos aspirar a hacer.

Después de muchos años en el desarrollo de aplicaciones en diferentes lenguajes de programación, gestión y formación de las personas, decidí dejarlo todo y centrar todos mis esfuerzos en ser un desarrollador de iOS. Desde 2011he ido mejorando mis habilidades en Objective-C, cocoa y swift últimamente y toda la teoría sobre la programación, trabajando y diseñando para convertirse en un día el tipo de experto que espero ser.

Como desarrollador de iOS tengo muchas oportunidades de trabajar en diferentes entornos que requieren otras disciplinas que iOS no puede cubrir, me refiero a desarrollo de aplicaciones de servidor y scripts. Ruby es mi segunda pasión ya que descubrí en el un gran lenguaje para hacer mi trabajo diario fácil y crear grandes herramientas y APIs para consumir de mis aplicaciones de iOS.

Durante un cierto período de mi vida profesional, tube la oportunidad de trabajar como head hunter, de ahí mi experiencia en evaluar y crear currículums, pero eso es mejor que lo leas en Maldito Currículum.

Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. The Engineering Protocol Stack
  2. How this book is organized
  3. About the author

CPU

  1. Task manager
  2. RAM
  3. Process organization
  4. Loading new content
  5. Storage

Task Manager

  1. Multitasking
  2. Task Execution
  3. Task Prioritizing
  4. Key Ideas

RAM, Your Memory

  1. How Our Memory Works
  2. Your Memory Enemies
  3. Enjoy the process
  4. Select What to Add
  5. Method of Loci
  6. Key ideas

Process Organization

  1. A Gold Mine
  2. Before You Start Organizing Your Time
  3. Different Organization Systems
  4. Why analog
  5. Start your journal
  6. Planning and Review
  7. Key ideas

Loading New Content

  1. How Learning Works
  2. Choosing What to Learn
  3. Key ideas

Personal Knowledge Management

  1. Why capture beats memory
  2. The three kinds of notes
  3. Capture without friction
  4. Linking over filing
  5. Retrieval: the practice of review
  6. Applying it as an engineering leader
  7. Key ideas

LAN

  1. Identifying Team Status
  2. Team Roles
  3. Career Path
  4. People
  5. Team Management

Identifying Team Status

  1. Why labels matter in engineering teams
  2. What’s unique about software/tech teams
  3. The three lenses, in practice
  4. Building a simple status snapshot
  5. When to revisit the snapshot
  6. Common mistakes when reading team status
  7. Key ideas

Team roles

  1. Roles and Personality Traits in Engineering
  2. Skills and roles in cross-functional software teams
  3. Key ideas

Career Path

  1. What is a Career Path
  2. Main risks
  3. Effect on new joiners
  4. Why fast growth makes it worse
  5. Defining a Career Path
  6. Leveling your team members
  7. Recap
  8. Key Ideas

Onboarding

  1. Key ideas

Communication

  1. Key ideas

Team Management

  1. The five dysfunctions
  2. Team Topologies & Structure
  3. 1-on-1s & Feedback Loops
  4. Hiring & Onboarding
  5. Team Health Checks
  6. Key ideas

WAN

  1. Stakeholder Map & Expectations (inside + outside)
  2. Cross-Team Collaboration & Dependencies
  3. Customers & Users: Bringing the Outside In
  4. External Partners, Vendors & Platforms
  5. Upward Management, Org Change & Protecting the Team

Stakeholder Map & Expectations (inside + outside)

  1. Who Are Your Stakeholders, Really?
  2. Inside vs Outside: Two Types of Stakeholders
  3. Mapping Your Stakeholders: A Practical Approach
  4. Understanding and Managing Expectations
  5. Communication Patterns: Routing the Right Signal to the Right Node
  6. When Expectations Break: Recovering Stakeholder Trust
  7. Key ideas

Cross-Team Collaboration & Dependencies

  1. Why Cross-Team Work Gets Hard Fast
  2. Types of Dependencies: Technical, Process, Decision
  3. Mapping Dependencies: A Practical Approach
  4. Ownership, Handoffs, and Shared Timelines
  5. Communication Patterns: Routing the Right Signal Across Teams
  6. When Dependencies Slip: Recovering Without Drama
  7. Key ideas

Customers & Users - Bringing the Outside In

  1. Who Are Your Real Customers and Users?
  2. Practical Ways to Collect Ongoing Feedback
  3. Turning Raw Feedback into Actionable Narratives
  4. Keeping Customer Stories Visible Day to Day
  5. Balancing What Users Ask For with What Makes Sense
  6. Building an Outside-In Habit in the Team
  7. Key ideas

External Partners, Vendors & Platforms

  1. Identifying Critical Dependencies
  2. Evaluating Beyond Features
  3. Working Agreements
  4. Keeping Integrations Healthy
  5. When Partners Fail
  6. Operating Model
  7. Key ideas

Upward Management, Org Change & Protecting the Team

  1. Representing the Team Upwards
  2. Negotiating Priorities
  3. Making Change Digestible
  4. Protecting the Team
  5. Communication With Leadership
  6. Managing Your Own WAN Load
  7. Key ideas

Recap

  1. What each layer gave you
  2. The protocols, not the motivation
  3. Where to go from here

Bibliography

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