Chapter 10: New Manager’s Playbook–Having Difficult Conversations With Employees
It’s a fairly routine deployment, but this time, it’s not full of victories. Something goes wrong—seriously wrong—and when the dust settles, you discover the problem centers on a basic mistake from one of your programmers. To add to the pain, this particular programmer just happened to leave work early that day and miss all of […]
Chapter 9: The Case for Weekly Meetings, Why an Old-School Schedule Gets Leading-Edge Results
In these days of open office arrangements, Agile project management, and a flood of fast-and-light startup practices, the idea of sit-down weekly meetings seems almost quaint, like chalkboards and rotary phones. Even Hewlett Packard abandoned the practice of weekly meetings years ago in favor of “management by walking around”. Managers were encouraged to get out […]
Chapter 8: A Real-Life Handbook for Making Delegation Work for You
Delegation. You’ve heard the legends. You’ve maybe even seen this miracle management technique in action. You know that absolutely everyone sings its praises even as they struggle to implement it. But as an agency owner, how do you make the magic of delegation work for you? I’m not here to blow sunshine at you. Even […]
Chapter 7: How to Manage Your Clients
Operating an agency is an experience that falls somewhere between elation and enduring the business end of a fire hose. In either case, those comfortable days of answering for the quality for your work–and only your work–are gone. You are now the point person for scheduling, deadlines, workflow, quality, team relationships, and a whole lot […]
Chapter 6: Straight Talk on Your Team’s Expectations of You
One of the toughest parts of managing a tech team is adjusting to the reality that other people are depend on you–for direction, for validation, for encouragement. And while you can feel their expectations as soon as you walk in the door, no one talks about them. Sure, they’re probably the same expectations that you […]
Chapter 5: What Nobody Told You About Being an Agency Owner
Congratulations on your new business! Was it announced with fanfare and confetti? Did you set up a fantastic new office space and with a front row parking space? Did your team immediately follow you into the workweek like Braveheart’s legions into battle? Yeah… me neither. In fact, when I first went out on my own, […]
Chapter 4: How to Really Put Down the Tools and Get Back to Being a Manager
New tech agency owners make all sorts of mistakes. Some are small and private, some are very public–and embarrassing. But there’s one mistake all managers make during their first year, and it’s this: they don’t put down the tools. The problem is that when the principals insist on trying to be programmers as well as […]
Chapter 3: Putting Down the Tools
Yes, we’ve all done it. I’ve done it. My previous managers have done it. And most likely, it’s the default setting for many battle-worn team leads. In those crisis moments when expectations are high, everything is going off the rails, and the deadline was yesterday, all new tech agency owners will utter one fateful sentence. […]
Chapter 2: Fantasy vs. Reality–When Running a Dev Shop Isn’t What You Imagined It Would Be
Congratulations! You’re on your own, calling all of the shots! In words of Dr. Phil, How’s that working for you? Or maybe you’re still working for someone else, but looking forward to the day when you finally can do things your way. Perhaps you’re a valued programmer who’s worked his way up the ladder, and […]
Chapter 1: Lead from the Podium–6 Essential Concepts New Managers Miss
The transition from programmer to manager can be a difficult one. One week, you’re at your desk cranking out masterful code, and the next, you’re managing a whole team that has to navigate innovative solutions, coordinate input from different departments, then anticipate and eliminate potential showstoppers. Stepping away from your identity as a superior coder […]