I love organizing things and created a structured (road)map of Software Engineering Management (EM). It is incomplete, based on my personal experience and opinion but useful if you are looking to expand your skill areas in this craft. What you’ll find are lists of keywords on topics that an engineering manager (EM as well) should have heard of and can be seen as a framework. It is leans towards enterprise SaaS where consumer focused product EMs would probably come up with other keywords.

Please note that this and all sub-pages are work in progress, pages to sub-categories are added continuously. 

If you are looking for advice regarding any of these topics, feel free to reach out to me.

Categories

• Principles
  
• Competencies
  
• Responsibilities

# Principles

• Lead by example.
• Bias to action and making decisions. Have a sense of urgency.
• If you are never saying no to your team, you’re managing nobody. If you’re never convincing your manager, you’re not a manager.
• The recipient decides on the meaning of a message.
• What people do always makes sense to them.
• As a manager, don’t treat everybody as you want to be treated. People are different.
• Clarity before harmony.
• Reduce, simplify and condense information.
• Software is complicated, people are complex. One cannot shut down people problems and emotions.
• The truth is reasonable for people.
• You cannot not communicate.

# Competencies

## Skills

• Management Skills
• Domain expertise

## Attitude

• Organisation and structure
• Reliability and accountability
• Humbleness
• Emotional stability
• Mental strength and confidence (…to say no)
• Pragmatism vs idealism & dogmatism and realistic approach
• Sense of urgency & proactivity & drive to completeness
• Open & growth oriented & creative mindset
• Reflective and improvement driven

# Responsibilities

• Building a high performing team - hitting delivery KPIs, coaching & career development, operations, keeping up team morale, motivation and happiness
• Information flow - down, side and upwards > changes, problems, updates etc.
• Project execution - structured, iterative and results driven, following up with next steps
• Software engineering and process/management and product optimizations - realistic, simple and clear, targeted towards quality and velocity
• Keeping people accountable and projects on track

## People

Are people motivated and know why things are built?

• Team Dynamics & Performance
• Coaching & Performance Management
• Training, Career Growth & Recognition
• Hiring & Diversity
• Information Flow & Alignment

## Speed

How quickly are things built?

• Autonomy
  
• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Optimization
• Software Development Framework
  
• Work Environment

## Quality

How well are things built?

• Product
  
• SDLC optimization
• Change Management
  
• Feedback Loops (Retrospectives)

## Delivery

How continuous is software delivered?

• Project Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Predictability
• Efficiency