My review of the book “Systems of Engineering Management" by Will Larson:

The book consists of the following categories:

  1. Organizations: Problems and ways to deal with organizational problems such as hypergroth, team sizing, productivity, etc.
  2. Tools: Using “Systems Thinking” to model your world, what to do when having to wear product management hat, vision and strategies, migrations, etc.
  3. Approaches: Saying no, ways engineering managers get stuck, settings organizational direction, etc.
  4. Culture: Selecting project leads, making your team as your first team, kill your heroes, stop doing it harder.
  5. 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:

  1. Running an enginering reorg. He is mentioning some good questions to re-think if the reorg is really the solution here.
  2. Four stages of the team. He identifies the following stages:
    1. Falling behind – in this stage, hire people until the team treads water.
    2. Treading water – in this stage, reduce the number of work in progress to allow the team deliver results.
    3. Repaying Debt – in this stage, add more time to the team so that they can finish up their technical debts.
    4. 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.
  3. Every internal problem can be traced back to missing or poor relationships problem. He says that with great relationships, every problem can be solved.
  4. People over process. With the right people, any process works. With the wrong people, no process works.
  5. 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.