Growing Software: Proven Strategies
for Managing Software Engineers by
Louis Testa
Focused On Small Companies
As the technology leader at a small software company, you need to focus
on people, products, processes, and technology as you bring your
software to market, while doing your best to put out fires and minimize
headaches.
Growing Software is your guide to juggling the day-to-day challenges of
running a software company while managing those long-term problems
and making sure that your business continues to grow. With practical,
hands-on advice, Growing Software will teach you how to build and lead
an effective team, define and sell your products, work with everyone from
customers to CEOs, and ensure high-quality results.

Instead of learning by trial and error, youll benefit from author Louis
Testas 20+ years of management experience. Testa combines big-picture
advice, specific solutions, and real-life anecdotes to teach you how to:
Work effectively with your CEO and executive team Improve
development team efficiency and enthusiasm Evaluate your software
methodology to improve effectiveness and safeguard against failure Use
product prototypes to bridge the gap between marketing and engineering
Defuse technology time bombs Whether youre new to managing
software or newly lost, Growing Software will help you and your growing
company thrive.
Personal Review: Growing Software: Proven Strategies for
Managing Software Engineers by Louis Testa
This is a great book! It is written for the new development manager,
perhaps temporarily inserted into a management position because there is
no one else to do it. With the new position come new responsibilities, new
pressures, a different work flow . . . The situation can be overwhelming.
This book provides a proven approach to dealing with these issues in an
organized and practical way, and provides many real-world examples of
both success and failure.
The book is sectioned into these topics:
Development team
Product and technology
Outside of engineering
Making work flow, process, projects and qualtiy
Planning for the future
The author deals with company size in discussing planning for successful
projects, from the one person company to the company with over 100
employees.
There is a strong emphasis on developing people skills, learning the
culture of the company, and discovering the process of decision making in
the company. Concrete examples of the requirements for planning
projects, including technical tools that are helpful, are scattered throughout
the book. One of the features of the book I particularly appreciated was the
"real life accounts" scattered through the book, statements from software
engineers discussing situations they'd faced in companies, and the pros
and cons of how they were handled.
Here is a listing of the chapters, this gives an idea of the breadth of
information contained in this book.
Getting started

Managing a development team
Creating an effective development team
Growing a software team
Defining the product
Driving releases
Evaluating your tools and methods
Assessing your technology
Working with your company
Working with the CEO and the executive team
Listening to your customers
Project Estimating
Starting a project
Project execution and tracking
Designing a software development process
Process improvement
Understanding quality assurance
Setting the direction
Product roadmap and strategy
This book would be a great resource for anyone involved in administration
in a company, from a newly recruited team leader to the CEO. There are
so many practical issues clearly stated with suggested resolutions there
isn't room to detail them all.
There is an 11 page index. There are detailed subheadings for each
chapter, which makes finding a particular section or topic very easy. Each
chapter has references for those who desire to do additional research into
a topic.
The author has a new web site to support the book,
http://www.gspractices.com/. Short discussions regarding resolution of
management difficulties are posted on the web site.
Highly recommended. One of the best books I've read on the topic.
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