Well-known author and long-time manager Watts Humphrey offers keen insight into the special challenge of identifying, motivating, and organizing creative technical people, and the opportunities involved in managing these people. Written for project leaders and managers, Managing Technical People delivers advice on how best to deal with the particulars of leading talented, technically minded people through project cycles. Author Watts Humphrey explains his methods for becoming a better project leader, recognizing and recruiting talented people for the right job, and effectively managing those people through the software product cycle. Most of his points are illustrated with anecdotes, tables, and charts, and there are plenty of the requisite multistep methods for improving specific problems. "Suppose you needed a new computer program. You would want your programmers to give this work high priority and to dedicate their energies to its success. Although no simple procedure can ensure that they do this, there are some methods that usually work....The key is to understand and respect them as professionals and to follow sound management principles. This knowledge and these principles are the subjects of this book." --from the Preface This book contains best-selling author Watts Humphrey's practical insights on how to lead technical professionals. In previous books, Humphrey established process as a key factor in successful software development. His advice on how companies and individuals could improve their software process has since been widely adopted. In this new book, he demonstrates the overriding importance of people to the success of any software project. He focuses particularly on the critical role of innovative people, and gives concrete advice on how to identify, motivate, and organize these people into highly productive teams. Drawing on experience as IBM's senior software-development executive, and expanding on an earlier work, Managing for Innovation , Humphrey presents here proven leadership practices and management techniques that can work in any organization. Given the software industry's dependence on creative human resources, managers will welcome his sound advice on the special challenges encountered in leading technical professionals, and on specific steps managers can take to encourage greater innovation while attaining yet higher levels of efficiency and quality. 0201545977B04062001 Known as “the father of software quality,” Watts S. Humphrey is the author of numerous influential books on the software-development process and software process improvement. Humphrey is a fellow of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the Software Process Program and provided the vision and early leadership for the original Capability Maturity Model (CMM). He also is the creator of the Personal Software Process (PSP) and Team Software Process (TSP). Recently, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology—the highest honor given by the president of the United States to America's leading innovators. Have you ever noticed how one project will succeed and another fail? On my first management job, I was assigned to a partially completed project. A small crew of inexperienced engineers was developing a complex cryptographic communications system for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Even though none of them had previous development experience, they completed the work on time and met all the government's specifications. From the very beginning, I could sense that this was a winning team. They were energetic, enthusiastic, and excited about their work. What causes some teams to have this winning quality, and how can managers help their teams to achieve it? This book has grown from my years in technical management. It captures my experiences as well as lessons I have learned from the many fine people I have worked with in nearly 50 years as an engineer, manager, and executive. During my 27 years with IBM, I was involved in developing the enormously successful IBM 360 and 370 systems. I also managed much of IBM's commercial software development for both the 360 and 370 systems and spent several years in IBM corporate finance. I was also Director of IBM's Glendale Development Laboratory and the 2000 engineers who developed IBM's intermediate-range computing systems, printers, banking products, and software systems. Since retiring from IBM, I have worked for another 10 years at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. Here, I founded and led the Process Program and have been named an SEI Fellow. During this time, I have been fortunate to participate in many innovative hardware and software projects and have been exposed to both successful and unsuccessful projects at many development organizations throughout the world. Although some of the experiences described in this book happened many years ago, their lessons are as