Personal Development: The Next Level in Software
I was on construx’s website the other day (Construx does software development best practices, construx’s website the other day (Construx does software development best practices, seminars, consulting, etc.) and stumbled on a real nugget: Their career progression ladder for software project managers. For the life of me, I can’t re-find the page (perhaps it was pulled?), but fortunately I had saved the info to google notebook.
The ladder describes three “levels” of career progression and each level has three components: experiences (such as estimating a project), reading material, and training (mostly Construx seminars–which sound really good).
Given how much I love reading, it was (surprise!) the reading lists which really interested me:
Level 10
- Code Complete, Steve McConnell
- Rapid Development, Steve McConnell
- Software Project Survival Guide, Steve McConnell
- UML Distilled, Martin Fowler et all
- Mastering the Requirements Process, Robertson and Robertson
- Software Requirements, Karl Wiegers
- “Manager’s Handbook for Software Development”, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Level 11
- Principles of Software Engineering Management, Tom Gilb
- Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks
- Peopleware, Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
- Measures for Excellence, Lawrence Putnam and Ware Myers
- The Art of Software Testing, Glenford Myers
- “Software Measurement Guidebook”, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Level 12
- Programming Pearls 2nd Ed, Jon Bentley
- Applying UML & Patterns 2nd Ed, Craig Larman
- Conceptual Blockbusting, James Adams
- Software Creativity, Robert Class
- Quality is Free, Philip Crosby
- The Deming Management Model, Mary Walton
- Managing the Software Process, Watts Humphrey
- Writing Effective Use Cases, Cockburn
- Exploring Requirements: Quality before Design, Gause and Weinberg
- Requirements Engineering, A Good Practice Guide, Sommerville and Sawyer
This is a killer list. The only thing missing is more coverage of risk management (!). But that omission aside, I’ve tackled about half of these and can attest to their value. Good stuff!
