Memoirs of a Software Team Leader
Memoirs of a Software Team Leader
About the Book
I've been working hard to create something that would help me to preserve my experience from being a software team leader. Quite naturally, I realized it's a good opportunity to share knowledge with other team leaders and developers. This is how my book came into existence.
What makes it interesting is that there are many IT management books available, yet most of them are tailored to match perspective other than technical team leader's. I decided to fill this gap.
Becoming a software team leader was both a pleasant and challenging experience. I had been trying to find a book that could help me to become a better leader, but all I found were excerpts. I had to extrapolate my experience as a team member, recall what had worked well and what hadn't and try to figure out my own leadership style. Luckily, I was cooperating with clever people, eager to try new things out; it was a perfect proving ground and I think I seized the opportunity well, though it took me a while to draw some of the conclusions. By reading the book, you can save yourself the trouble, learn my knowledge and begin putting it into practice within hours.
Are you a team leader? I think I can surprise you. Do you want to become a leader? Great, by learning from my experience you'll be better since the day one!
By reading the book, you'll learn how to:
- Select the right iteration length
- Deal with a problematic customer
- Make sure that what the customer asks for is doable
- Decompose requirements into small, comprehensible tasks
- Visualize task dependencies
- Do code review
- Deliver working code at the end of each iteration
- Make sure you did what the customer wanted
- Learn by mistakes and improve
- Become a good leader
- Make the right decisions
- Resolve conflicts
- Form a balanced team
- Keep your team in a good shape
- Coordinate actions as to maximize parallelism
- Communicate with people outside of your team
- Deploy and maintain software
- Hire the right developers
- And more…
About the Author
Table of Contents
-
1. Introduction
- Who is this book for?
- Who wrote it?
- My services
- Chapter layout
- Meet the team
- Disclaimer
-
2. The Circle of Life
- The iterative and agile approaches
- Iteration length
- Steps
-
3. Step I: Requirements Gathering
- Meet the customer
- Meeting
- Loyal advisor
- Problematic customer
- The perfect customer
- After the meeting
-
4. Step II: Analysis
- Technical questions
- Conceptual questions
-
5. Step III: Decomposition
- Initial information
- UML diagram
- Separation
- Task size
-
Task types
- Controversy
-
Dependencies
- Visualization
- Raw order
-
6. Step IV: Planning
- Communication overhead
- Iterative planning
- Task management software
-
7. Step V: Catching a Breath
- Strategic thinking
- We have a problem!
-
8. Step VI: Integration
- Quality assurance
-
Code review
- Before or after tests?
- Changesets
- Complexity
- Bottleneck
- Troublesome tasks
- 9. Step VII: Final Testing
-
10. Step VIII: Verifying Requirements Are Met
- Possible outcomes
-
11. Step IX: Lessons Learned
- Technical
- Communication
- Personal
- Feedback processing
- Higher level
- The circle is now complete
-
12. Leadership
-
In a nutshell
- Know your stuff
- Know your staff
- Don’t be a jerk
- Don’t be weak
- Hands-on or hands-off?
- Delegate!
- Getting real
- Decision making
- Resolving conflicts
-
In a nutshell
-
13. Team
- Versatility
- Irreplaceable people
- Time to say goodbye
- New members
- Team player’s traits
- Good and mediocre developers
- Motivation
- Celebration
-
14. Team Coordination
- Daily meetings
- Core hours
-
Version control
- Relevant commit messages
- Frequent committing
- Frequent updating
- Explicit changeset
- Single change, single commit
- Substantial changes only
-
Unit tests as a glue
- Stubbing
- Mocking
-
Outside the team
- Half-witted code
- Communication channels
- The least surprise
-
15. Product Life Cycle
-
Deployment
- You need a plan
- Premature deployment
- Documentation
-
Maintenance
- Bugs
- Changes
- Code quality
- Continuous integration
-
Deployment
-
16. Developer Recruitment
- My approach
-
Five common mistakes
- Lack of self-confidence
- Too much self-confidence
- Lack of cooperation
- Aura of mystery
- I’ve read about it
- Selection tests
-
17. Final Thoughts
- What should you do now?
- My prize
Authors have earned$10,085,459writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
The Leanpub 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
C++20
Rainer GrimmC++20 is the next big C++ standard after C++11. As C++11 did it, C++20 changes the way we program modern C++. This change is, in particular, due to the big four of C++20: ranges, coroutines, concepts, and modules.
The book is almost daily updated. These incremental updates ease my interaction with the proofreaders.
- #2
C++ Best Practices
Jason TurnerLevel up your C++, get the tools working for you, eliminate common problems, and move on to more exciting things!
- #3
Atomic Kotlin
Bruce Eckel and Svetlana IsakovaFor both beginning and experienced programmers! From the author of the multi-award-winning Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java together with a member of the Kotlin language team comes a book that breaks the concepts into small, easy-to-digest "atoms," along with exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA!
- #4
Sockets and Pipes
Type ClassesSockets and Pipes is not an introduction to Haskell; it is an introduction to writing software in Haskell. Using a handful of everyday Haskell libraries, this book walks through reading the HTTP specification and implementing it to create a web server.
- #5
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #6
Composing Software
Eric ElliottAll software design is composition: the act of breaking complex problems down into smaller problems and composing those solutions. Most developers have a limited understanding of compositional techniques. It's time for that to change.
- #7
Cloud Strategy
Gregor Hohpe“Strategy is the difference between making a wish and making it come true.” A successful migration to the cloud can transform your organization, but it shouldn’t be driven by wishes. This book tells you how to develop a sound strategy guided by frameworks and decision models without being overly abstract nor getting lost in product details.
- #8
node-opcua by example
Etienne RossignonGet the best out of node-opcua through a set of documented examples by the author himself that will allow you to create stunning OPCUA Servers or Clients.
- #9
Functional Design and Architecture
Alexander GraninSoftware Design in Functional Programming, Design Patterns and Practices, Methodologies and Application Architectures. How to build real software in Haskell with less efforts and low risks. The first complete source of knowledge.
- #10
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture for Developers: Volumes 1 & 2 - Technical leadership and communication
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
Django for Beginners/APIs/Professionals
3 Books
- #3
PowerShell
3 Books
Buy every PowerShell book from Adam Bertram at a 20% discount! - #4
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #5
Cisco CCNA 200-301 Complet
4 Books
Ce lot comprend les quatre volumes du guide préparation à l'examen de certification Cisco CCNA 200-301. - #6
All the Books of The Medical Futurist
6 Books
We put together the most popular books from The Medical Futurist to provide a clear picture about the major trends shaping the future of medicine and healthcare. Digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the future of 20 medical specialties, big pharma, data privacy, digital health investments and how technology giants such as Amazon... - #7
Linux Administration Complet
4 Books
Ce lot comprend les quatre volumes du Guide Linux Administration :Linux Administration, Volume 1, Administration fondamentale : Guide pratique de préparation aux examens de certification LPIC 1, Linux Essentials, RHCSA et LFCS. Administration fondamentale. Introduction à Linux. Le Shell. Traitement du texte. Arborescence de fichiers. Sécurité... - #8
Software Architecture and Beautiful APIs
2 Books
There is no better way to learn how to design good APIs than to look at many existing examples, complementing the Software Architecture theory on API design. - #9
Learn Git, Bash, and Terraform the Hard Way
3 Books
Learn Git, Bash and Terraform using the Hard Way method.These technologies are essential tools in the DevOps armoury. These books walk you through their features and subtleties in a simple, gradual way that reinforces learning rather than baffling you with theory. - #10
9 Books-Bundle: Shut Up and Code!
9 Books
"Shut up and code." Laughter in the audience. The hacker had just plugged in his notebook and started sharing his screen to present his super-smart Python script. "Shut up and code" The letters written in a white literal coding font on black background was the hackers' home screen background mantra. At the time, I was a first-year computer...
