Resources

Books, videos and other content that I highly recommend.

Books

Radical Candor

Kim Scott does an exceptional job of taking the reader through the why and how of direct, upfront conversation. This is such a critical leadership skill. The book is easy to consume and will change the way you think about how you talk to people not just in a work setting, but in any valuable relationship.

A Seat At The Table

How do you add value as a CTO in the age of agility, autonomous teams and cradle to grave ownership? Mark Schwartz completely nails the state of the tech industry as it stands (with a focus on software) and tells you how to be effective as a tech leader. I've listened to this as an audiobook at least twice - it's a gem.

Leadership Is Language

David Marquet, of 'Turn the ship around' fame, with another offering that I personally think is even better. I've seen the disastrous impact of poor language use from managers and those of influence and, conversely, the inspiring effect from great use of language.

Creativity Inc

The inspiring story and useful insights from Ed Catmull's time at Pixar, creating a culture that drove creativity and engagement to new heights. Ed continues the story into the new challenges faced by the acquisition from Disney, a company with a very different culture, and how Pixar's influence grew.

Teaming

Amy uses the word 'Teaming' to encapsulate getting people working well together. This is clearly a key ability for any business and she does an excellent job of how to achieve this in a knowledge economy.

Team Topologies

An excellent book on team structures and interactions to enable fast flow of change in software organisations. The authors provide a practical, step-by-step approach to structuring business and technology teams for fast flow, with four fundamental team topologies, three team interaction modes, and a set of team cognitive load patterns to help you scale your organisation over time.

Podcasts

Legacy Code Rocks!

This gem was recommended at a talk I attended on making legacy code safe to work with - what a find! It's one of the few podcasts that I keep coming back to, I find myself making notes to find out more about ideas and tools that are discussed in almost every episode. Gold.

The Skeptics Guide To The Universe

Although not technically related to software management, if you want to keep your critical thinking neurons firing at full capacity, I can highly recommend this show.

Videos

How To Estimate In Software Development

An exceptional talk given by Gerard Beckerleg highlighting the reality of software estimates. He talks about why we might want estimates, the problems that arise from relying on them and discusses alternative approaches.

Clean Code - Uncle Bob

A six part video series discussing all of the ideas that Robert Martin has written about over the years. Easily the most valuable 7+ hours of video binging you can do. Is binging a word?