Software Leadership ― A Guide to Successful Software Development

"This book will help you not become a "Pointy Hair Manager." It will give you enough insight into the nature of software, the development process, and the techniques and tools used, so that you can intelligently reason about development and adjust, plan, replan, manage risks, and lead a team to success; not just document and record their failure."
--From the Foreword by Philippe Kruchten, Rational Fellow, Rational Software Canada

Together, a high demand for productive software development teams and a company's call for superior software have made seasoned professionals invaluable assets to software organizations. New managers must quickly become familiar with the key skills required by the needs of the position, and seasoned professionals must learn new methods of team organization to cope with the shorter length of the development cycle. Software Leadership: A Guide to Successful Software Development provides sound, practical guidance on how to be a good manager and how to build a competitive software team. This book is for the manager with little software background, as well as the seasoned software professional.

Based on the author's extensive professional experience, the book is a concise and straightforward overview of what he has found that every competent team leader absolutely has to know and practice. The following topics, which a successful leader must understand, are covered in detail:

• Software quality
• Effective development practices
• Team dynamics
• Appropriate leadership style

This book will show you how to lead your team toward the delivery of timely and cost-effective software, and teach you how to lead a modern software development project or organization.

Murray Cantor, formerly a software manager at IBM and TASC, is now principal consultant at Rational Software Corporation, where he provides project management consulting services to Rational's customers. He is author of Object-Oriented Project Management with UML, and writes a monthly column on Software Management in The IT Project Leader. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.