Good Managers.

Room 106.

9:15-10:30am Sat Feb 27, 2010

Good things

• Respect
• Buffer to/from upper management. aka "Shield the team"
• • transparency to effects
  • manage expectations
  • communicate business context
• Delegate technical decision making
• delegate work and appropriate responsibility
• Manage context switching
• Own the good and the bad results
• give credit to employees
• enable work
• use situational leadership - different approaches for different individuals
• be aware of what devs are doing
• exhibit consistent behavior
• require a development process
• set individual expectations - for business and personal development
• provide feedback to developers on specific skills
• encourage learning, personal development
• identify & provide opportunities for development in career and skills
• manage risk
• inspire thoughtfulness over "do it this way"
• give design responsibility but have team review
• remind developers to know who their customers are - not only other developers

Bad Things

• avoid being a yes-man or no-man to upper management
• avoid constant priority shifting (pass-through)
• avoid not wanting to be a manager
• avoid allowing bad team members to remain
• avoid isolating new team members

Continuous Learning

• read "The Leadership Challenge", Kouzes and Posner: http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/
• read "Behind Closed Doors", Rothman at Pragmatic Press
• listen to podcast at manager-tools.com
• http://groups.google.com/group/leading-teams