My review of the book “Systems of Engineering Management" by Will Larson:
The book consists of the following categories:
- Organizations: Problems and ways to deal with organizational problems such as hypergroth, team sizing, productivity, etc.
- Tools: Using “Systems Thinking” to model your world, what to do when having to wear product management hat, vision and strategies, migrations, etc.
- Approaches: Saying no, ways engineering managers get stuck, settings organizational direction, etc.
- Culture: Selecting project leads, making your team as your first team, kill your heroes, stop doing it harder.
- Careers: Hiring, etc.
The major disappointment for me was the lack of examples. Because of that, it was very dry. It felt like you were reading a manual more than a journey which you can relate to.
The areas I most enjoyed are:
- Running an enginering reorg. He is mentioning some good questions to re-think if the reorg is really the solution here.
- Four stages of the team. He identifies the following stages:
- Falling behind – in this stage, hire people until the team treads water.
- Treading water – in this stage, reduce the number of work in progress to allow the team deliver results.
- Repaying Debt – in this stage, add more time to the team so that they can finish up their technical debts.
- Innovating – in this stage, give the team some slack so that they can continue innovating. But don’t push the team into science project experimenting state, but instead find valued outcomes.
- Every internal problem can be traced back to missing or poor relationships problem. He says that with great relationships, every problem can be solved.
- People over process. With the right people, any process works. With the wrong people, no process works.
- Do the hard thing now.
Should you read it? I say yes if you are new to management. But it can give you some good reminders if you are doing management for some time.