Skip to main content

I Can Manage


For work reasons, I've recently become interested in resources for those new to line management. I put out an appeal for suggestions on Twitter and Managing The Unmanageable was recommended by Thomas Ponnet, with a little cautious reservation: " Hope you enjoy it. I don't agree with everything but that comes with the job description. Not all translates for my context."

This quote from the book's preface sets up the authors' intent nicely:
There is no methodology for the newly anointed development manager charged with managing, leading, guiding, and reviewing the performance of a team of programmers — often, the team he was on just days before. There are no off-the-shelf approaches. Unlike project managers, who devote hours and hours of study toward certifcation in their chosen career path, development managers often win their management roles primarily from having been stellar coders while displaying a modicum of people skills.
The book is long — over-long for my taste — and, rather than try to rehash the whole thing, I'll take the liberty of making an exceedingly crude precis:
  • people are all different
  • ... but there are broad classes of characteristics that it can useful to acknowledge and look for
  • people are motivated by a relatively small set of important things
  • .. and, after a certain level is reached, salary is not usually the most important thing
  • hiring well is crucial, and can be extremely difficult
  • ... and a manager should be thinking about it even when they are not actively hiring
  • to do well, a manager  needs to be organised
  • ... even more organised than you probably think
  • to command respect from a team, a manager should be able to demonstrate relevant skills
  • ... and need to know when is a good time to do that and when to step back
  • to enjoy the support of a team, a manager needs to show empathy and give protection
  • ... and that sometimes means letting them fail; but shouldn't mean setting them up to fail
  • to function well within a company a manager needs to establish relationships and communicate well
  • ... in all directions: down, up, and across, and in different media
  • a good manager will reflect on their own actions
  • ... and look to improve themselves
  • the source of a team culture is the manager
  • ... and, once established, it requires nurturing

Perhaps these things seem self-evident. Perhaps some of them are self-evident. Broadly speaking I think I'd agree with them, based on my own experience. And, in my own experience I find that I learned many of them only incrementally and some of them the hard way.

Which is where a book like this can help - it's a brain dump of wisdom from the two authors mostly, but also from a bunch of others who offer nugget-sized bites of experience such as
Managers must manage - Andy Grove
with associated commentary:
I’ve used Andy Grove’s phrase innumerable times to coach my managers and directors of programming teams. When confronted with a problem, they can’t just "raise a red flag." I’m always available when needed, but good software managers find ways to solve problems without my involvement or executive management direction.
And here's handful of others that chimed with me:
Don’t let the day-to-day eat you up - David Dibble
David made this statement to make the point to his management team that managers have "real" work to do; that the seemingly urgent—e-mail, meetings, the routine—could easily fill a day. Only by being intentional about how we use our days can managers overcome letting that happen
If you’re a people manager, your people are far more important than anything else you're working on - Tim Swihart
Tim notes, 'If a team member drops by at an awkward time and wants to chat, set aside what you’re doing and pay attention. They may be building up the courage to tell you something big. I’ve noticed this to be especially true when the sudden chatter isn’t somebody who normally drops by for idle conversation.'
Managers who use one-on-one meetings consistently find them one of the most effective and productive uses of their management time - Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby
We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in this ratio- Kimberly Wiefling
While I love theory and can happily spend time in talking shops, dissecting semantics and splitting hairs, as my recent MEWT experience showed when Iain McCowatt said this: "[James] wields distinctions like a surgeon wields a scalpel."

I also recognise the value of activity to explore, inform, test, and back up the theory. I like to think of myself, still, as a practitioner, and Managing the Unmanageable is a book written by practitioners and grounded in their practice, with examples drawn liberally from it.

It's unlikely, as Thomas Ponnet suggested, and I'd agree, to fit exactly with everything that you're doing right now with the team you have in the place you're working - especially as some of it is very specific to managing software developers. Parts of it will probably jar too. For instance, I found the suggested  approach to levels of seniority too simplistic.

But what it can do is give you another perspective, or inspiration, or perhaps fire warning shots across your bow from some position not too dissimilar to yours, and rooted in the real world of managing people in technical disciplines.
Image: http://www.managingtheunmanageable.net/

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi James,
That's a good reflection of the book but I'd like to add two things. One is that I see it as more positive than it was portrayed here. The reason for that is that while some things are self-evident and we 'know' them it's something else to actually 'understand' them. This book helped me with that by providing many examples from the experience of the authors.
The other is that the authors are on Twitter and can be contacted and I'm sure are happy to help or clarify things.
James Thomas said…
I agree. The fact that something stated simply appears self-evident doesn't mean that it must have been known to, or thought of, or experienced before by the reader. Also, that simple precis obscures so many of the rough edges and unexpected anomalies that old hands know are there.

I'd certainly recommend the book to others and, in fact, I already have.

Popular posts from this blog

Meet Me Halfway?

  The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book,  Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide  responses to common questions and statements about testing from a  context-driven perspective . It's being edited by  Lee Hawkins  who is  posing questions on  Twitter ,   LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST  mailing list  and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to  contribute  by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me?   --00-- "Stop answering my questions with questions." Sure, I can do that. In return, please stop asking me questions so open to interpretation that any answ...

Can Code, Can't Code, Is Useful

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book,  Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide  responses to common questions and statements about testing from a  context-driven perspective . It's being edited by  Lee Hawkins  who is  posing questions on  Twitter ,   LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST  mailing list  and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to  contribute  by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me?   --00-- "If testers can’t code, they’re of no use to us" My first reaction is to wonder what you expect from your testers. I am immediately interested ...

The Best Programmer Dan Knows

  I was pairing with my friend Vernon at work last week, on a tool I've been developing. He was smiling broadly as I talked him through what I'd done because we've been here before. The tool facilitates a task that's time-consuming, inefficient, error-prone, tiresome, and important to get right. Vern knows that those kinds of factors trigger me to change or build something, and that's why he was struggling not to laugh out loud. He held himself together and asked a bunch of sensible questions about the need, the desired outcome, and the approach I'd taken. Then he mentioned a talk by Daniel Terhorst-North, called The Best Programmer I Know, and said that much of it paralleled what he sees me doing. It was my turn to laugh then, because I am not a good programmer, and I thought he knew that already. What I do accept, though, is that I am focussed on the value that programs can give, and getting some of that value as early as possible. He sent me a link to the ta...

Beginning Sketchnoting

In September 2017 I attended  Ian Johnson 's visual note-taking workshop at  DDD East Anglia . For the rest of the day I made sketchnotes, including during Karo Stoltzenburg 's talk on exploratory testing for developers  (sketch below), and since then I've been doing it on a regular basis. Karo recently asked whether I'd do a Team Eating (the Linguamatics brown bag lunch thing) on sketchnoting. I did, and this post captures some of what I said. Beginning sketchnoting, then. There's two sides to that: I still regard myself as a beginner at it, and today I'll give you some encouragement and some tips based on my experience, to begin sketchnoting for yourselves. I spend an enormous amount of time in situations where I find it helpful to take notes: testing, talking to colleagues about a problem, reading, 1-1 meetings, project meetings, workshops, conferences, and, and, and, and I could go on. I've long been interested in the approaches I've evol...

Not Strictly for the Birds

  One of my chores takes me outside early in the morning and, if I time it right, I get to hear a charming chorus of birdsong from the trees in the gardens down our road, a relaxing layered soundscape of tuneful calls, chatter, and chirrupping. Interestingly, although I can tell from the number and variety of trills that there must be a large number of birds around, they are tricky to spot. I have found that by staring loosely at something, such as the silhouette of a tree's crown against the slowly brightening sky, I see more birds out of the corner of my eye than if I scan to look for them. The reason seems to be that my peripheral vision picks up movement against the wider background that direct inspection can miss. An optometrist I am not, but I do find myself staring at data a great deal, seeking relationships, patterns, or gaps. I idly wondered whether, if I filled my visual field with data, I might be able to exploit my peripheral vision in that quest. I have a wide monito...

ChatGPTesters

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book,  Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide  responses to common questions and statements about testing from a  context-driven perspective . It's being edited by  Lee Hawkins  who is  posing questions on  Twitter ,   LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST  mailing list  and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to  contribute  by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me?   --00--  "Why don’t we replace the testers with AI?" We have a good relationship so I feel safe telling you that my instinctive reaction, as a member of the T...

Vanilla Flavour Testing

I have been pairing with a new developer colleague recently. In our last session he asked me "is this normal testing?" saying that he'd never seen anything like it anywhere else that he'd worked. We finished the task we were on and then chatted about his question for a few minutes. This is a short summary of what I said. I would describe myself as context-driven . I don't take the same approach to testing every time, except in a meta way. I try to understand the important questions, who they are important to, and what the constraints on the work are. With that knowledge I look for productive, pragmatic, ways to explore whatever we're looking at to uncover valuable information or find a way to move on. I write test notes as I work in a format that I have found to be useful to me, colleagues, and stakeholders. For me, the notes should clearly state the mission and give a tl;dr summary of the findings and I like them to be public while I'm working not just w...

Postman Curlections

My team has been building a new service over the last few months. Until recently all the data it needs has been ingested at startup and our focus has been on the logic that processes the data, architecture, and infrastructure. This week we introduced a couple of new endpoints that enable the creation (through an HTTP POST) and update (PUT) of the fundamental data type (we call it a definition ) that the service operates on. I picked up the task of smoke testing the first implementations. I started out by asking the system under test to show me what it can do by using Postman to submit requests and inspecting the results. It was the kinds of things you'd imagine, including: submit some definitions (of various structure, size, intent, name, identifiers, etc) resubmit the same definitions (identical, sharing keys, with variations, etc) retrieve the submitted definitions (using whatever endpoints exist to show some view of them) compare definitions I submitted fro...

Build Quality

  The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book,  Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide  responses to common questions and statements about testing from a  context-driven perspective . It's being edited by  Lee Hawkins  who is  posing questions on  Twitter ,   LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST  mailing list  and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to  contribute  by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me?   --00-- "When the build is green, the product is of sufficient quality to release" An interesting take, and one I wouldn't agree with in gener...

Express, Listen, and Field

Last weekend I participated in the LLandegfan Exploratory Workshop on Testing (LLEWT) 2024, a peer conference in a small parish hall on Anglesey, north Wales. The topic was communication and I shared my sketchnotes and a mind map from the day a few days ago. This post summarises my experience report.  Express, Listen, and Field Just about the most hands-on, practical, and valuable training I have ever done was on assertiveness with a local Cambridge coach, Laura Dain . In it she introduced Express, Listen, and Field (ELF), distilled from her experience across many years in the women’s movement, business, and academia.  ELF: say your key message clearly and calmly, actively listen to the response, and then focus only on what is relevant to your needs. I blogged a little about it back in 2017 and I've been using it ever since. Assertiveness In a previous role, I was the manager of a test team and organised training for the whole ...