10 Best Books for Software Engineering Managers and Leaders

I have been working for many years in the software engineering industry and the last few years in consulting. I noticed that all successful leaders in software engineering should combine managerial and technical skills.

For me books are one of the main sources for quality and useful knowledge. I would like to share ten best books. In my opinion, helping everyone to develop and improve leadership skills is required for the software industry. I won’t describe leadership’s best sellers like Laws of Leadership or Good to Great. I would recommend more targeted books for managers and leaders in software development.

Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering

Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
by Frederick Brooks Jr.

This book is marketed as a handbook for developers, actually the main focus on development is from the manager’s point of view, who is working with a team of developers. In most IT-projects there are issues with planning, documentation, technical design and testing. The author helps to understand why it is happening and how to avoid this.

Death March

Death March (2nd Edition)
by Edward Yourdon

This reading is not for newbies. Tough issues in complex projects are touched. You can find solutions and possible implementations for gone cases. For instance, you don’t have enough time, budget and resources for a project implementation. Yourdon offers to focus on business goals and the main aspects. How to negotiate, prioritize project’s needs, use all available resources as efficiently as possible. You will read when you should be flexible and when take no refusal. The main point is how to understand when it is high time to leave the project. Step by step you will learn the behavioural patterns for hard project’s cases.

Consulting Outbreak: Manager and Software Architect Could be Friends

Consulting Outbreak: Manager and Software Architect Could be Friends
by Oleksii Bilogurov

Easy and quick reading for leaders who are just making their first steps in software architecture consulting. The author describes how to achieve maximum success for enterprise projects on initial communication stages with clients. You will read about how to be prepared for consulting, what to do with many uncertainties in the beginning of a project and how to avoid failure. The main goal of this book is to help business and technical people speak the same language and have the same expectations of each other.

The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management

The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management
by Tom DeMarco

It is a well known book, at the same time I would like to include it into my list, because it is written as a business adventure novel. The main focus is on the work with people. Together with the main hero Webster Tompkins you will follow all project’s stages from scratch. The journey will start from building and hiring a team and ending firing and conflict management. There is a lot of humor and sarcasm together with simple explanations. It helps to understand the main ideas quick enough.

Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects
by Tom DeMarco

Without risk there is no successful project. The author thinks that there is no much sense in the project without a risk, because without risk there is no gain. Don’t be afraid of risks, you should predict and manage risks the right way. Reading this book you will know how to classify, measure, prioritize and mitigate risks.

Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers

Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers
by J. Hank Rainwater

This book will be useful for a developer who is going to get leadership skills. If you have already started a leadership journey, you can improve and extend existing knowledge. The author is very sequential and precise. He is keeping in mind that you are a software developer and talking to you like a software engineer at the same time improving your managerial and leadership skills. The structure of the book is very accurate. At the beginning there is an explanation how to get used to the leadership role and only after he applies this knowledge to communication with a team and managers.

The Art of Project Management

The Art of Project Management (Theory in Practice (O’Reilly))
by Scott Berkun

The former manager of Microsoft wrote a practical book with plenty of useful exercises for the beginner project managers. There are three main topics — planning, practical experience and management.The special attention is paid to the common mistakes being made by managers. For example, less experienced managers could ignore experienced, more mature colleagues in pursuit of their own ambitions. You will read about working and non-working approaches. you can read in this book how to build a team, assign roles, encourage your teammates, build effective processes and many others .

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition)
by Alan Cooper

All developers try to implement the best engineering solution improving functionality and performance of the product, at the same time they forget about business goals and usability. As a result there are a lot of complex services with “golden features” useless for the average user. The author thinks that usability and user’s satisfaction should be in the first place and only after that development. First of all, the book will be useful for managers who were developers in the past.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
by Geoffrey A. Moore

The author is the first who noticed the huge difference between two types of users. Visionaries — who are willing to use new technologies and approaches and pragmatists — using familiar and proven approaches, avoiding all new. The author is describing how to work with this chasm between two types of users. Crossing the Chasm is based on thirteen years of experience in marketing and selling. It could be a handbook for project manager and marketolog, because described strategies were proven many times in the practice.

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
by Marty Cagan

In short, this book is about a product manager who is looking for trade-offs between user’s happiness and business efficiency. What main skills should be compared with project managers, brand managers and marketologs. The author describes how to select the important features and capabilities of a product and what features should not be a waste of time. How to identify and build a minimal successful product. The main point is that he tells us how to create a product customers love.