Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By : Morgan Evans
Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By: Morgan Evans

Overview of this book

Delightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems. This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration. By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Case for Engineering Management
5
Part 2: Engineering
9
Part 3: Managing
15
Part 4: Transitioning
19
Part 5: Long-Term Strategies

The classic stages of a team

Engineering ability alone does not determine the performance of a team. Team dynamics is a broad term to describe the collective behaviors and psychological processes that occur within a team. Engineering managers must explore concepts within team dynamics in order to understand why team performance is the way it is.

One of the most commonly used ways of looking at teams is through Bruce Tuckman’s four stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Developed in the 1960s, understanding these stages can give you a frame of reference as to why a team may be behaving in a certain way. Even without a deep knowledge of these stages, it is useful to be aware that a major contributor to team performance is where they fall on the path to team familiarity and acceptance. Keep this in mind as you work with and assess teams of your own. Let’s look at the four stages in more detail:

  • Forming teams are recently assembled...