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

Summary

Throughout this chapter, we have seen how small oversights in your approach can lead to unexpected outcomes that are hard to undo after the fact. I hope this chapter will help you to avoid difficult and costly failure scenarios in your journey as an engineering manager.

Here is a review of the takeaways from these failure modes:

  • Make time to connect with your engineers to help you avoid being blindsided by problems happening beneath the surface of your team. Leverage one-on-one conversations, create a safe environment for feedback, and ask blameless questions regularly.
  • Take action to maintain relationships and mutual respect between cross-functional teams. Set a strong example with your own behavior, define success at the product level, and speak up immediately when you hear other teams being disparaged.
  • Keep teams focused and happy by being careful about how and when information is shared. Resist the urge to divulge information before it has been finalized...