Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself

“Whether you are in a startup or Fortune 500 company; are a developer, development manager, or CEO; use agile, lean, waterfall, or other methodology–if software and quality are important to you, you should read and pay attention to Watts’s reflections.”

–Bill Ihrie, Former SVP & CTO, Intuit

“You will enjoy this collection for its down to earth, accessible prose, its pragmatism, optimism, and, above all, Watts’s demonstration that software quality improvement is vitally important and very achievable.”

–Aidan Waine, Information Solutions General Manager, Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division

“Watts has developed a real weapon for beating your competition: a reliable, repeatable way to create software that has excellent quality and reduces the time to deliver it to your customer and lowers the cost of the entire software life cycle and improves employee morale. All at the same time!”

–Michael J. Cullen, Vice President, Quality, Oracle Communications Global Business Unit

A Lifetime of Invaluable Management Insights from Legendary Software Quality Guru Watts S. Humphrey

In 1986, Watts S. Humphrey made an outrageous commitment: a promise to transform software development. As the pioneering innovator behind SEI’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Personal Software Process (PSP), and Team Software Process (TSP), Humphrey has more than met that promise. But his contributions go beyond methodology: For decades, his deeply personal writings on project management have been admired by software engineers worldwide.

Reflections on Managementbrings together Humphrey’s best and most influential essays and articles-sharing insights that will be indispensable for anyone who must achieve superior results in software or any other endeavor.

Collected here for the first time, these works offer compelling insights into everything from planning day-to-day work to improving quality, encouraging teamwork to becoming a truly great leader.

All of these writings share a powerful vision, grounded by a life in software that has extended across nearly six decades. The vision is this: To succeed, professionals must effectively manage far more than plans, schedules, and code-they must manage teams, bosses, and above all, themselves.