This book has the following goals:
Although this book is primarily written from the viewpoint of someone who works in the software industry, I’ve heard from people in other industries that the concepts in the book have helped them as well. Anyone in a leadership position (present or future) may find value here; and people in the software industry will find most of the concepts relatable.
This book is intended for anyone who has thought about undertaking or is currently in a leadership position. This isn’t limited to managers or team leads. If you’re in any position in which you make decisions that other people rely on and wait for, this book can help you learn how to improve your professional life and the professional lives of the people around you. People who fit into this category may include software architects, build managers, security folks, UI experts, and more. If you have the word expert in your job title, it’s very likely you can find value in this book.
The elastic leadership model is introduced in chapters 1–10. Then, in chapters 11–32, I’ve assembled a plethora of notes from new and experienced leaders and consultants about leadership do’s and don’ts. I’ve also added my own interpretation of where their advice fits into the elastic leadership model and manifesto:
Roy Osherove is the DevOps process lead for the West Coast at Dell EMC, based in California. He is also the author of The Art of Unit Testing (Manning, 2013) and Enterprise DevOps (http://enterprisedevops.org). He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of leadership, unit testing, test-driven development, and continuous-delivery automation. He frequently speaks at international conferences on these topics and others.
You can find more information at these sites:
Purchase of Elastic Leadership includes free access to a private web forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and from other users. To access the forum and subscribe to it, point your web browser to www.manning.com/books/elastic-leadership. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you are registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct on the forum.
Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialog between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. It is not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contribution to the forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking him some challenging questions lest his interest stray! The Author Online forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as the book is in print.
The figure on the cover of Elastic Leadership is captioned “Le légumier,” or “A gardener.” Much like a gardener who grows and tends plants in the right conditions, a good leader knows when to sow, when to water, and when to let go.
The illustration is taken from a nineteenth-century edition of Sylvain Maréchal’s four-volume compendium of regional dress customs published in France. Each illustration is finely drawn and colored by hand. The rich variety of Maréchal’s collection reminds us vividly of how culturally apart the world’s towns and regions were just 200 years ago. Isolated from each other, people spoke different dialects and languages. In the streets or in the countryside, it was easy to identify where they lived and what their trade or station in life was just by what they were wearing.
Dress codes have changed since then, and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It’s now hard to tell apart the inhabitants of different continents, let alone different towns or regions. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.
At a time when it’s hard to tell one computer book from another, Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought back to life by Maréchal’s pictures.
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