A repository with resources on the challenges you might encounter as an engineering manager. I try to highlight multiple sides of the same topic since, as a manager, you'll more likely than not answer questions by saying "It depends". Inspired by curated collections like How They Test.
Concepts I have yet to find good resources on can be found here.
- Thinking And Modelling Techniques
- Management Practices
- Metrics
- System Design And Architecture
- Engineering
- Collaboration In Teams
- GenAI
- Security
- Software Testing
- Agile Frameworks
- Organisational Models
- Other Curated Collections
Techniques used to structure problem solving and find potential pitfalls
To me, thinking and modelling techniques are essential skills for any engineering manager (or any manager at all). If you want to get to root causes of certain issues, get a better view of what the catalysts and pitfalls are in the workflow,... thinking techniques are invaluable. It allows me to challenge my own assumptions and come to a logical conclusion.
- The Systems Thinker
- Thinking In Systems: A Primer (Donella H. Meadows) 📘
- Wardley mapping (Simon Wardley)
- Value Stream Mapping
Useful info on generally accepted good management practices.
- Don't be a muppet (not a resource, just general advice)
- Multipliers (Liz Wiseman) 📘
- The Five Dysfuntions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) 📘
- The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) 📘
- Radical Candor (Kim Scott) 📘
- How to Lead When You're Not in Charge (Clay Scroggins) 📘
- Drive (Daniel Pink) 📘
- An Elegant Puzzle (Will Larson) 📘
- The Manager's Path (Camille Fournier) 📘 - Especially useful for devs wanting to go in leadership roles
- "Google Does It" (Bruce Taylor) - a warning against copy-pasting solutions from big-name companies
- Team Topologies (Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais)
- The Rands Test (Michael Lopp a.k.a Rands)
- Crafting Engineering Strategy (Will Larson) 📘
- The Engineering Leader (Cate Huston) 📘
- The Mythical Man-Month (Frederick Brooks)
- Implementing Lean Software Development (Mary & Tom Poppendieck) 📘
Choosing the right thing to measure, and measuring it right, can be one of the most impactful things you're doing
- The SPACE of Developer Productivity
- Frictionless (Nicole Forsgren & Abi Noda) 📘
- Measure What Matters (John Doerr) 📘
Techniques and patterns for system design
- C4 Model (Simon Brown)
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications (Martin Kleppmann) 📘
- System Design case studies (Curated collection)
The neverending quest to find out what good engineering means.
To avoid long lists I've split this section up in organizational practices (i.e. things that should be understood & set up organisation-wide) and individual practices (i.e. things that any individual engineer should understand & implement). The distinction is vague in the end, since organization creates behaviour and behaviour feeds back into organization.
- Accelerate (Nicole Forsgren) 📘
- The DevOps Handbook (Gene Kim) 📘
- Frictionless (Nicole Forsgren & Abi Noda) 📘
- Minimum Viable CD (Bryan Finster)
- CI/CD Dependency Tree (Bryan Finster)
- Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction
- The Joel Test - 12 steps to better code (Joel Spolsky)
- Platform Engineering Toolkit (Gielen-Rojas Lopez, Tom Slenders, Dr. Andrea Klettke)
- The Pragmatic Programmer (David Thomas) 📘
- Professional Programming (Curated collection by Charles-Axel Dein)
- Think Like A Programmer (V. Anton Spraul) 📘
People in a team should collaborate, but fostering good collaboration is hard. These resources might help.
- Mob Programming - A Whole Team Approach (Woody Zuill)
- Software Teaming: A Mob Programming, Whole-Team Approach (Woody Zuill & Kevin Meadows) 📘
- On Pair Programming (Martin Fowler)
- Atlassian Team Playbooks
- Awesome Code Reviews (Curated collection by John Barton)
- Gource - visualizing source control repositories 🛠️
Guides and info on how to use GenAI effectively in engineering
- Augmented Coding Patterns (Lada Kesseler)
Because security is important
- OWasp Top Ten
- OWasp Application Security Verification Standard
- SAFECode publications
- OWasp Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM)
- PagerDuty Security Training For Engineers - Training material made public by PagerDuty
Understand the job of a tester and their challenges
I got into software development through software testing, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. More importantly, though, is that I find testability one of the major factors in long-term success of any software application - so understanding the challenges and struggles your testers are facing is key to proper management of your applications.
- Agile Testing (Lisa Crispin) 📘
- Lessons Learned in Software Testing (Cem Kaner & James M Bach) 📘
- Perfect Software... And Other Illusions About Software Testing (Gerald Weinberg) 📘
- Explore It! (Elisabeth Hendrickson) 📘
- How They Test (Curated collection by Abhijeet Vaikar)
- Specification by Example (Gojko Adzic) 📘
How to train engineers, and what to train them in.
- Developer Roadmaps (Kamran Ahmed)
Complete scaling frameworks with their own variations on & additions to Scrum. I do NOT recommend copy-pasting these to your org.
Models which may or may not be used in the company they're named after. I do NOT recommend copy-pasting these to your org.
- Spotify model (Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson)
- Shape Up (BaseCamp)
Spreading cheat sheets and guidelines can help raise awareness on practices, principles, models, etc - making it easier to align on certain topics within an organisation.
- Principles of writing consistent, idiomatic JS (Rick Waldron)
- HTML Cheat sheet (I don't remember where I got this from)
More curated collections