About this Book

This book has the following goals:

• Inspire would-be team leaders to take the plunge
• Teach new and experienced leaders how to deal with everyday issues that are people-related
• Explore a new manifesto and value system for leaders to follow, and use as a compass when making tough decisions
• Teach leaders how to teach others and how to learn new skills themselves through challenges

Who should read this book

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.

Roadmap

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:

• Part 1—Chapter 1 introduces the overall value system and manifesto this book follows. Everything else ties into parts of this chapter. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the concepts of elastic leadership and bus factors, and how to use the value system in real life in what I call the elastic leadership model. Bus factors represent the first low-hanging fruit that can be changed when you look at your environment.
• Part 2—Chapter 4 deals with survival mode, the first of the three modes of operation under the elastic leadership model. Many teams are in survival mode, and the hardest thing about this mode is that it’s usually a downward spiral: things tend to get progressively worse when you try to fix them. This chapter discusses how you can get out of this mode and move on to learning mode.
• Part 3—Chapters 5–7 deal with learning mode, which is the second of the three modes. Chapter 5 discusses how learning happens (mostly through ravines). Chapter 6 talks about commitment language and how it helps to bring up issues that people may not be comfortable talking about with you. We’ll move to challenging teams into ravines in chapter 7—a key technique for successful leaders, which can also be a double-edged sword if abused.
• Part 4—Chapters 8–10 deal with self-organization mode: how to measure it and how to cultivate it. These chapters discuss the role of the leader in this mode and how to set up special clearing meetings that help expose team issues (these are not retrospectives, but deeper conversations). You’ll also learn about influence patterns.
• Part 5—Chapters 11–32 present an assortment of notes from people I’ve asked to contribute, each with an analysis by me regarding how it ties in with the manifesto in chapter 1.

About the author

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:

• ElasticLeadership.com—The blog that started this book
• Osherove.com—Roy’s other blog
• Osherove Online Training (courses.osherove.com)—Roy’s online training on TDD, DevOps, and, soon, elastic leadership

Author Online

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.

About the cover

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.