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

Fostering Accountability

The work of software engineers involves making individual contributions toward shared team goals and objectives. In making contributions, they are each given responsibility for some portion of those shared goals. Even so, we may not always be able to count on everyone to display the same level of responsibility and commitment to their work. How can engineering managers encourage their engineers to take an active role in team objectives?

To manage a high-performance software engineering team, you will eventually need to think about accountability. In a workplace setting, accountability is the willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions and their outcomes. Accountable team members take ownership of their work, admit their mistakes, and are willing to hold each other accountable as peers. In performance terms, from Chapter 9, high accountability is a desirable team climate.

In writing and research on managing teams, accountability is often...