Books for team leaders and project managers

    What properties should a good team lead have? Undoubtedly, he must be a techie, have versatile experience, be able to establish dialogue within the team and with his superiors, conduct discussions and make decisions, take responsibility, understand business processes, think as a customer and business owner. Well, be a little psychologist.

    In domestic IT, I often observe the following picture: the best (?) Developer from the team (aka 23-year-old senior) often became a team lead. And to become a project manager (project manager) sometimes it’s enough just to know English and “powerpoint” at the user level. These are the realities of domestic outsourcing and you need to somehow live with it.

    As a result, it often turns out somehow like this:
    Because by ten seniors, according to statistics, nine are blunt.

    To become a good team lead, you need to shovel a very large number of business cases, to be in the shoes of not only the developer, but also the product owner and business owner. But how can an ordinary developer do this? This is where specialized literature comes to the rescue. It is clear that she will not add real experience, but she can give an initial background.

    I have never seen books on project management or personnel on developer tables. But, in my opinion, every middle-level specialist should read this kind of literature. And yes, the initiative at this stage should come more from the company (or the existing team lead), i.e. the developer is still hardly seriously thinking about his future career as a manager.

    Below I have provided a list of books that, in my opinion, should be read by every developer who wants to become a good manager in the foreseeable future.

    1. Tom DeMarco. Deadline A novel about project management.
    2. Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister. Human factor. Successful projects and teams.
    3. Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister. Naughty from adrenaline and zombie patterns. Patterns of behavior for project teams.
    4. Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister. Waltzing with the Bears: risk management in software development projects.
    5. Patrick Lensioni. Five vices of the team. Parables about leadership.
    6. Patrick Lensioni. Five temptations of the leader: parables about leadership.
    7. Patrick Lensioni. Three signs of dull work. A story with meaning for managers (and their subordinates).
    8. Patrick Lensioni. Death from meetings.
    9. Jason Friday, David Heinmeier Hensson. Rework. Business without prejudice.
    10. Frederick Brooks. Mythical man-month, or How software systems are created.
    11. Jeffrey Young and William Simon. iKona. Steve Jobs.
    12. Carmine Gallo. i Presentation. Lesson persuasion from Apple leader Steve Jobs.
    13. Joel Spolsky. Joel is about programming.

    In addition to technical literature, it is advisable to read something on psychology (philosophy), HR, finance and risk, as well as biographies of successful people. In no case do I pretend to be 100% complete this list, so I ask you to comment in the comments to share your recommendations and reviews.

    Thanks for attention!

    PS As an experiment, I made a small questionnaire on the topic “What books have you read?” . Please spend 30 seconds filling out, and I, in turn, will post the results of the survey after a while.

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