Leading Effective Engineering Teams

Leading Effective Engineering Teams

by Addy Osmani
Released June 2024
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098148249

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Book description

In this insightful and comprehensive guide, Addy Osmani shares more than a decade of experience working on the Chrome team at Google, uncovering secrets to engineering effectiveness, efficiency, and team success. Engineers and engineering leaders looking to scale their effectiveness and drive transformative results within their teams and organizations will learn the essential principles, tips, and frameworks for building highly effective engineering teams.

Osmani presents best practices and proven strategies that foster engineering excellence in organizations of all sizes. Through practical advice and real-world examples, Leading Effective Engineering Teams empowers you to create a thriving engineering culture where individuals and teams can excel. Unlock the full potential of your engineering team and achieve unparalleled success by harnessing the power of trust, commitment, and accountability.

With this book, you'll discover:

  • The essential traits for engineering effectiveness and the pitfalls to avoid
  • How to cultivate trust, commitment, and accountability within your team
  • Strategies to minimize friction, optimize career growth, and deliver maximum value
  • The dynamics of highly successful engineering teams and how to replicate their achievements
  • How to implement a systems thinking approach for everyday problem-solving and decision-making
  • Self-advocacy techniques to enhance your team's visibility and recognition within the organization

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Table of contents

  1. 1. What Makes a Software Engineering Team Effective?
    1. Research on What Makes Teams Effective
      1. Project Aristotle
      2. Other Research
    2. Building an effective team
      1. Compose a strong team
      2. Enable a sense of Team Spirit
      3. Lead Effectively
      4. Sustain a growth culture
    3. Conclusion
  2. 2. Efficiency vs. Effectiveness vs. Productivity
    1. Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Productivity
      1. Measurement
      2. Influencing Factors
    2. Output Vs. Outcome
      1. Measuring Outputs and Outcomes
      2. Focus on Outcomes over Outputs
    3. Effective Efficiency
      1. Effective efficiency for beginners
      2. Managing trade-offs
      3. Redefining Team Productivity
      4. Balancing effectiveness and efficiency
      5. Everyday tips for becoming effectively efficient
    4. Conclusion
      1. References
  3. 3. The 3E’s Model of Effective Engineering
    1. Enable
      1. Define effectiveness for your business domain
      2. Initialize Effectiveness
    2. Empower
      1. Feed Opportunities, Starve Problems
      2. Make Yourself Effective
      3. Follow Team Effectiveness Models
      4. Multiply Effectiveness
      5. High-Leverage Activities
      6. Lessons from Google
    3. Expand
      1. Leadership Challenges
      2. The Three Always of Leadership
    4. Conclusion
  4. 4. Insights from Research at Google
    1. Project Oxygen
      1. A Brief History
      2. Research Process
      3. Google Manager Behaviors
      4. Outcomes
      5. Project Aristotle
      6. Psychological Safety
      7. Dependability
      8. Structure and Clarity
      9. Meaning
      10. Impact
      11. Outcomes
    2. Conclusion
  5. 5. Antipatterns and Pitfalls
    1. Anti-patterns categorization
    2. Individual Anti-patterns
      1. The Specialist
      2. The Generalist
      3. The Hoarder
      4. The Relentless Guide
      5. The Trivial Tweaker
      6. Process-related Anti-patterns
      7. Last-Minute Heroics
      8. PR Process Irregularities
      9. Protracted Refactoring
      10. Retrospective Negligence
    3. Structural Anti-patterns
      1. Isolated clusters
      2. Knowledge Bottlenecks
    4. Leadership Anti-patterns
      1. Micro-management
      2. Scope Mismanagement
      3. Planning Overkill
      4. Skeptical Leadership
      5. Passive Leadership
      6. Underappreciation
    5. Conclusion
  6. 6. Effective Managers
    1. From Engineering to Management
    2. Getting Started
    3. Defining a Strategy
    4. Managing your time
      1. Planning
      2. Execution
      3. Assessment
    5. Understanding and Setting expectations
      1. What results are expected from me?
      2. What results do I expect from team members?
    6. Communication Essentials
      1. Team Meetings
      2. One-to-ones
      3. Messaging
      4. Non-verbal communication
      5. People management
      6. Hiring
      7. Performance Evaluation 
      8. Attrition Management 
      9. Mentorship and Coaching
    7. Managing Challenging Projects
    8. Managing Team Dynamics
      1. Individual idiosyncrasies and diverse teams
      2. Remote teams
      3. Conflict resolution
    9. Enabling Mastery and Growth
      1. Harnessing Downtime for Growth
      2. Empowering Growth Amidst High Workload
    10. Networking Essentials
    11. Conclusion
  7. 7. Enabling Effective Leaders
    1. Effective Leaders Vs. Effective Managers
    2. Leadership Roles
      1. Technical Lead
      2. Engineering Managers
      3. Tech Lead Managers (TLM)
    3. Assessing yourself
      1. Critical Traits
      2. Desirable Traits
    4. Leading Effectively
    5. Leadership Style
      1. Choosing a Leadership Style
      2. Combining different styles
      3. Environment based leadership
    6. Conclusion
  8. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Leading Effective Engineering Teams
  • Author(s): Addy Osmani
  • Release date: June 2024
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098148249