Engineering Manager's Handbook: An insider’s guide to managing software development and engineering teams

Key Features

• Acquire the necessary skills to manage engineers across various settings
• Gain valuable insights into engineering leadership, people management, and driving organizational change
• Discover pitfalls to avoid as a new engineering manager and understand their causation

Book Description

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.

What you will learn

• Pitfalls common to new managers and how to avoid them
• Ways to establish trust and authority
• Methods and tools for building world-class engineering teams
• Behaviors to build and maintain a great reputation as a leader
• Mechanisms to avoid costly missteps that end up requiring re-work
• Strategies to increase employee retention on your team
• Techniques to facilitate better product outcomes

Who this book is for

This book is a valuable resource for software engineers and developers transitioning into engineering management roles, equipping you with best practices and insights to navigate the new responsibilities effectively. Whether you're a newly promoted engineering manager or an experienced one seeking immediate answers to challenges, this comprehensive and up-to-date guide provides the support you need. Familiarity with the software development lifecycle, including concepts like version control, code review, and deployment, is required.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to Engineering Management
2. Engineering Leadership Styles
3. Common Failure Modes for New Engineering Managers
4. Leading Architecture
5. Project Planning and Delivery
6. Supporting Production Systems
7. Working Cross-Functionally
8. Communicating with Authority
9. Assessing and Improving Team Performance
10. Fostering Accountability
11. Managing Risk
12. Resilient Leadership
13. Scaling Your Team
14. Changing Priorities, Company Pivots, and Reorgs
15. Retaining Talent
16. Team design and More

Morgan Evans has been leading web and native app engineering teams since 2010. Having held senior engineering leadership roles at complex media and technology organizations, the author knows first hand how to lead challenging projects at high scale with demanding stakeholders and vocal customers. Evans has an educational background in social psychology and information architecture, lending a unique perspective to the book. She has been working on development teams delivering consumer and b2b digital products for 18 years.