Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. Edition

This is a good perspective and focused treatment of a challenging task.It is enjoyable reading as well. It is cleverly written.

Excellent book for first time IT managers. Recommended!

So I got this book: Herding Cats: A Primer For Programmers Who Lead Programmers, by J. Hank Rainwater. When the programmers I manage came into my office they'd see it and they'd say, "We're cats?!" "Better than being sheep," I answered.Although I was put off by the author's photos in the introduction, and he quotes Steven Covey, it actually turned out to be quite good: it crystallized my thoughts in some areas and gave me brand new thoughts in others. And when you mostly agree with someone, maybe you should give those items you don't agree with, or rarely think about, another look.The points I agreed with: avoid unnecessary meetings; leads can't be programmers anymore, but leads have to still code; hiring people you can't communicate with is no good, even if they're superstars; keep track of the tasks people are working on (duh); software development is more like gardening than construction (watching Greenfingers the other night I discovered that gardeners go through a design phase too); micromanagement is bad; geniuses shouldn't be made managers; borrow from software methodologies, don't accept one as a whole package.And the points I realized where I had room for improvement: delegate, inspect, organize, and manage meetings. Since I read the book, about a year ago, I've tried to follow some of his advice in these areas. Some of it has worked, some hasn't, but I don't regret experimenting with any of it.If you're like me, and you read almost every software management book you can get your hands on, this should be in your collection too.

Don't confuse this book with the classic, "Managing people is like herding cats" by Warren Bennis.This book is well-intentioned, but I feel sincere pity for anyone who works at a company where these are the right rules. Here are some random bits of 'wisdom' from the book:= The deadline is everything; people should be fired for missing deadlines= If the VP of sales asks for something stupid, your job is to deliver it as quickly as possible= Software developers can be stereotyped to make it easier to manage them - stereotypes like "slob", "magician", etc.As other reviewers have noted, there's a constant and useless intrusion of quotes from Star Wars, poetry, and other sources, intended to support the simplistic conclusions of the author. Do not read this book; choose "Peopleware", as others have suggested, or the Bennis book.

Actually, I bought this book as a gift for my boss, but as I'm often called upon to mentor small groups myself (being the dinosaur of our department), I decided to read Rainwater's work over the weekend (being careful not to ear-mark it). As the book's introduction says, the first three chapters themselves are worth the money. Of course, this book isn't really for those lucky enough to have studied management (though even those would profit from the programmer "type" descriptions). But for all the other programmers destined to lead programmers, this is exactly what we need; the chapter about managing oneself is especially insightful. All common sense stuff, really, but sometimes a good spec (and this book can be seen as such) is needed even for things we already know, but don't practice. Rainwater's English is a joy to read, though I guess some of the in-jokes (given only as footnotes, so as not to disturb the flow of the otherwise serious text) are only understandable the "old" school programmers (yes, such as myself...).

Good

I liked this book. It wasn't an all encompassing book on everything about team management, but it was a good, easy read. I'd recommend it.

The good part is that I got lots of good stuff from this book. I started viewing leadership differently and some paragraphs were quite a revelation.The bad part is that the book is somewhat hard to assimilate. Some issues:1) From a high-level the book is well structured. But when you dive into the small and little details, the information looks a little disorganised. The contents of some chapters left me with the impression that they are not finished.2) The author is very good in presenting his own past experience but the book doesn't go too far beyond that. On one side, this strategy is right - you can't go wrong if you speak from experience! On the other side, I see his approach somewhat limiting - a book about management and leadership should go beyond the experience of a certain individual...3) The style assumes probably too much the "geeky factor".4) The author lacks completeness in many of the topics. For example, I think a lot more can be said about process management.Anyway, probably there is a "perfect treaty on management" somewhere. This book is the opposite of that other "perfect" book. You find here fun-to-read sets of advices and stories on management, focused more on the author's personal experience.