Very good refresher book for a lot of common sense behaviors and best practices that we all should keep in mind as managers. It's one of those books that I'll pull out again in a year just to thumb back through and get back on track where needed.

I've experienced good and bad managers during my career. If I try to figure out patterns the good managers I worked with had followed, that would almost match the contents of this book.

The book goes even further though. It provides ultimate guidelines for being a great manager. Plus it introduces agile management principles very gently without labeling them so explicitly. Thus it is a must read for managers who are skeptical about agile or anybody willing to introduce agile guerrilla-way.

Furthermore this book provides great advice on inter-people communication, coaching and working in an organizational context. I highly recommend it.

Another classic quick-read.

I've read it because some people (that I respect) have recommended it to me ("You didn't read Derby/Rothman book? Never?! Really?! How is that even possible?") ... and the first impression wasn't that good - this book feels quite 'stiff'. I know it sounds odd, especially keeping in mind the fact that book focuses on interpersonal aspects of management (so it's not another PMI-like PM-bookkeeping type of book), but due to fiction insertions that are very 'artificial' & 'stock' (like stock photos) I couldn't help the feeling that it was written at least 20 years ago, in a completely different reality (which is not true, actually it's just 10).

But, if you overcome this aversion, the book is still relevant & it focuses on real problems in real world. It's not very sophisticated & it provides rather basic lessons, but I could easily recommend it to any fresh manager.

This is the book that I needed in life.

Great book for management, focused on one-to-one meetings and it management.

"Behind Closed Doors" is a relatively small set of essays about project manager Sam and his team.

The idea is not new. Tom DeMarco in his remarkable "Deadline: A Novel about Project Management" already tried this idea: to tell a story about poor guy who is constantly facing some project management issues.

Unlike "Deadline", "Behind Closed Doors" is a mix of fictional stories with some explanations, "Try this" and "Check this" sections. And unlike "Deadline" this book tries to cover even smaller st of management-related missing some important once like compensation, working environment, "zone" and many others. It doesn't cover everything, but what it covers it covers amazingly good.

The main idea behind all the stories is how not to be a jerk.

This book teaches how not to forget that the main goal for every manager is to facilitate other's work. This book teaches respect. Book shows why it is important to find right task for the right people without assuming that "good engineer can do every task I want". Book shows why many engineers hate all meetings so much and teaches how to make them as productive as possible. This book shows the value of one-on-one, timely feedback and value of coaching.

This is very short, but very interesting book with tons of insights on many topics.

Definitely *must read*!

Overall, good advice. This review does a great job summarizing: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

If I had to pick just one book on frontline management, I'd probably go with The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman instead. These books have some great overlap, but I prefer the approaches in Effective Manager (not to mention their data-driven approach to recommendations).

Very solid advice but cheesy, somewhat unrelatable example narrative

All the advice in this book is spot on or close. I just found that the made-up, example story the authors used to describe management in action was pretty boring to read through. Also, I've been working at startups my whole career, and this book focuses on a world I thought no longer exists. It sounds like the 80s... Who has an office these days? Or has a phone line? And delivers software on a multi month cadence?

Ma note de lecture complète en français ici

If you're new to managing people , you can do worse than read this case study and guide to the traditional skills and strategies for organizing a technical team. Keep in mnd that it's only one reduce, however!

Best guide to get your projects quickly on track

Not as much good advice as I expected. I love the authors and have seen them speak I was disappointed in the content of the book.