Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself

by Watts S. Humphrey, William R. Thomas

“Whether you are in a startup or Fortune 500 company; are a developer, development manager, or CEO; use agile, lean, waterfall, or other methodology–if software and quality are important to you, you should read and pay attention to Watts’s reflections.” –Bill Ihrie, Former SVP & CTO, Intuit “You will enjoy this collection for its down to earth, accessible prose, its pragmatism, optimism, and, above all, Watts’s demonstration that software quality improvement is vitally important and very achievable.” –Aidan Waine, Information Solutions General Manager, Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division “Watts has developed a real weapon for beating your a reliable, repeatable way to create software that has excellent quality and reduces the time to deliver it to your customer and lowers the cost of the entire software life cycle and improves employee morale. All at the same time!” –Michael J. Cullen, Vice President, Quality, Oracle Communications Global Business Unit A Lifetime of Invaluable Management Insights from Legendary Software Quality Guru Watts S. Humphrey In 1986, Watts S. Humphrey made an outrageous a promise to transform software development. As the pioneering innovator behind SEI’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Personal Software Process (PSP), and Team Software Process (TSP), Humphrey has more than met that promise. But his contributions go beyond For decades, his deeply personal writings on project management have been admired by software engineers worldwide. Reflections on Management brings together Humphrey’s best and most influential essays and articles sharing insights that will be indispensable for anyone who must achieve superior results in software or any other endeavor. Collected here for the first time, these works offer compelling insights into everything from planning day-to-day work to improving quality, encouraging teamwork to becoming a truly great leader. All of these writings share a powerful vision, grounded by a life in software that has extended across nearly six decades. The vision is To succeed, professionals must effectively manage far more than plans, schedules, and code they must manage teams, bosses, and above all, themselves.

Genres: Programming, Management

260 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2010

Reviews

[NJ Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watts S Humphrey is one of the authors who inspired me back in the 1990s when I read his book "Managing the Software Process". I try to follow many of the lessons he taught in the first book.

In "Reflections on Management", Humphrey re-iterates many of the same lessons that have already been discussed in his other books. Not much new ground is established, but it is always good to re-listen to pearls of wisdom, even after repeat hearings. Sometimes, we just need to have this lessons drone into us again and again, especially if one is not by nature disciplined to follow the instructions offered by habit.

Of course, most management topics are rehash of the same things over and over again - be it management of projects, of people, of processes. Regardless of the industry one is in, the same management skills are always required. And truly, everything about management starts with the individual. One can only succeed if one has the inner motivation to do so. The old adage is right: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink." This book is only useful if one is personally motivated to improve one's own management skill. However, this book does not teach a lot of prescriptive techniques - they are covered by Humphrey other books - so it is not as useful for a general reader hoping to learn some useful skills in software project management. For that, you will need to learn them from other books. But this book is fine for general reading. As the title of this book suggest, this book is more like essays on various topics about software project management. The only thing is that the essays are very general, and do not differ from those written by other authors in this genre of self help and management books.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not particularly long, and full of many nuggets of wisdom.

Humphrey tends towards the waterfall / upfront prerequisites / planning style of development but in many cases makes a good argument for its necessity (i.e. in big software projects).

Really good book to discuss the many working relationships in software teams and how to improve them.

[TN · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was one of the greatest project management books that ever read.