Scaling Teams: Strategies for Building Successful Teams and Organizations

Description

Print Length: 282 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media Publication Date: January 11, 2017 ISBN: 978-1491952276 Request #1562546618.58741 This practical guide helps you navigate through several aspects of team management that can change considerably as your team expands, including people management, organization structure, communication, hiring, and culture. Ideal for managers building teams or departments consisting of roughly 10 to 150 people, this book covers strategy and tactics for managing growth. Engineering leaders David Loftesness and Alexander Grosse begin with an example of a single engineering team, which represents an independent startup or an autonomous group within a larger company. From there, they take you through typical scaling points as the company or department grows in size and complexity. Scaling Teams also incorporates advice and lessons-learned from several engineering leaders. Leading a fast-growing team is a uniquely challenging experience. Startups with a hot product often double or triple in size quickly—a recipe for chaos if company leaders aren’t prepared for the pitfalls of hyper-growth. If you’re leading a startup or a new team between 10 and 150 people, this guide provides a practical approach to managing your way through these challenges. Each section covers essential strategies and tactics for managing growth, starting with a single team and exploring typical scaling points as the team grows in size and complexity. The book also provides many examples and lessons learned, based on the authors’ experience and interviews with industry leaders. Learn how to make the most of: Hiring: Learn a scalable hiring process for growing your team People management: Use 1-on-1 mentorship, dispute resolution, and other techniques to ensure your team is happy and productive Organization: Motivate employees by applying five organizational design principles Culture: Build a culture that can evolve as you grow, while remaining connected to the team’s core values Communication: Ensure that important information—and only the important stuff—gets through Alexander Grosse is currently the VP of Engineering at issuu. Previously, he was the VP of Engineering at SoundCloud and the R&D director at Nokia. David Loftesness formerly managed engineering teams at Twitter, Xmarks, A9, and Amazon. Currently he is a dad, advises startups, mentors new managers, and writes stuff down.