We reviewed a load of books on Project management at TamsPalm’s over the last few months – every one of them was a worthy read. Today, Apress Publishing sent us a new kind of project management book – Herding Cats focuses on only one thing: managing programmers!
The book starts off with a few things that may be handy for every programmer recently promoted into middle management. You learn a bit about “programmer breeds”; about leadership; about why administration is important and about other aspects of being a manager.
After that, Herding Cats goes into the details. You find a well-written chapter on managing meetings, a chapter on managing information overload and other meanies, and an interesting chapter on technical leadership(how you earn it, what it is, etc).
Once these “basics” are cleared, you get a two-chapter introduction to leadership. The first chapter shows you a few breeds of failed leaders like the (sic) “dark empire builder”. While I didn’t agree to some of the passages, the chapter was a great read. The next chapter looks at what leadership really consists of – also interesting!
At the end of the book, you get a chapter on working with your boss and a chapter on miscellaneous topics…
Hank Rainwater’s writing style is easy to read, but very different from the regular tech book writer, as he writes in slang and uses quite a few biblical analogies. This may leave a non-native like me wondering about what a few things mean – however, understanding the text was no major thinking exercise. The graphics in the chapters have a comic-like style; they definitely are funny and will make you laugh.
Overall, Hank Rainwater’s book(current price 24$ at Amazon’s) definitely is nothing for the novice who has no idea of project management – he is better off with one of the books that cover the basics. However, once you start leading more than one or two programmers, the hints given in the book start to pay out. Even though you probably won’t agree to everything stated, thinking about the topics at hand is great!
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