Books for Managers
9 books I found useful for building and scaling-up teams, managing people and projects. I'm a big fan of people focused, Agile management, but there are also some books which deal with hard project management skills.
Scaling Up - Verne Harsnish
This book is intended for people who're serious about scaling up their business or running a start-up. But it is also very well applicable to anyone who wants to set up teams and departments from scratch, or who wants to scale up existing ones. Tons of practical advice and methods are presented.
The People's Scrum - Tobias Meyer
There are plenty of books which treat Scrum as some sort of method you can follow like a cooking recipe. This is not one of them! Instead, Mayer shares his thoughts, in short chapters, about what it means to be agile when doing Scrum and how, at its core, Scrum isn't about process and rituals - but about people.
Software Estimation - Steve McConnell
Estimating time for software development is one of the most challenging tasks out there. McConnell introduces estimation techniques, teaches the difference between estimates and targets, and how to deal with uncertainty in planning. This book should be an essential read for everyone serious about managing software engineering projects.
Agile Estimating and Planning - Mike Cohn
A good follow-up book after Software Estimation. Covers how to apply estimation techniques iteratively in an Agile context, and how to deal with uncertainty while staying on target in Agile projects.
The Game Production Toolbox - Heather Maxwell Chandler
Chandler gives you the grand tour about all the steps needed to make a video game in an AA/AAA company. She presents the disciplines and teams, their dependencies, and how to plan delivery of a game from pre-production to the shipping stage. If you always wondered what a game producer does, this is the best book on the topic.
Project Management - Harvey Maylor & Neil Turner
A not too-thick textbook on "classical" project management (i.e. the "hard skills"), and one of the most approachable texts I have found on the topic. Covers things such as risk management, critical paths, estimation, staffing, resource leveling, stakeholder management, and much more.
The Ten Day MBA - Steven Silbiger
This book truly is a MBA in a nutshell. Each chapter covers a course that you will typically find in a MBA program. From accounting and finance to people management, to marketing, to strategy - the book presents the topics and methods MBAs would take to approach them, as taught in a MBA course.
Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers & Joy Beatty
Even when doing Agile, you'll save yourself a lot of work when you don't start anywhere, but somewhere closer to the final goal. This is where having good requirements come in. Good requirements help you to communicate what you want to do to stakeholders and engineers more effectively. Read this book if you're tired of running in circles in your
project because you can't pin down what people want and what you should do.
Product Ownership Meistern (German) - Frank Düsterbeck & Ina Einemann
Unfortunately this book is not available in English, which is a shame, because it presents a concise and jam-packed overview of what it means to manage software products and being a product owner. For understanding stakeholders, to determining value, to managing deliveries, it's all in there.
