I have not read the book, however, the missing subjects
you speak of could be covered by a generic leadership
book.
I agree with your sentiments - as a team leader myself I
have come to appreciate that the realy challenging
aspects of the job are around human issues. The
technical bit comes naturally, it's the human bit which
is really tough; as technical beasts though, we tend to
concentrate on what we deem tractable and shy away from
what is obviously hard.
I think the intent of the book was not to promote
leadership, but to help you in writing industry-leading
code. Two different meanings for "Code Leader."
I've read the book and it's pretty good - for teams that
don't know what continuous integration is or how to get
it going, for teams who don't use source control or why
it's useful... this is good stuff. I think there are
more people out there than we realize that aren't using
some of these best practices and the book definitely
fills that void.
On the other hand, you're right - it doesn't matter if
you have all these practices outlined if you can't get
the team to follow them.
One book you might want to check out along those lines
is "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. It's
written from more of a "management" perspective than a
"leader" perspective, but it touches on some of the soft
skills that are missing from other books.
Roy,
that part is definitely missing from the book, largely
because my goal was to deal with the technical issues. I
agree 100% that you can't be a team lead without those
"soft" skills that people often overlook. Do you think
there are issues of team leadership that apply only to
software teams and aren't covered in the "generic"
management books?
I would say that there are unique management soft skills
for the software development environment that differ
from the generic management books. Software developers
tend to be very smart, and this requires a unique
approach to management that most generic management
books don't cover very well.
I think you're right on the money when it comes to the
technical approach, and if there are teams out there
that are still not using source control _shudder_ I
wouldn't want to be their customer.
Perhaps in version 2.0 of "Code Leader" you can delve
into some of the "soft" skills required :-)