Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers   Buy it at Amazon Read a Sample Chapter From The Publisher
	Author Hank Rainwater Publisher APress Length 252 pages vbRad Rating: 4 fingers up. (4 out of 5) Reviewed by Robert Gelb

The first thing, according to the author, a manager should do is to classify his/her programmers. It should help the manager dealing with the team in, perhaps, crafting customized approaches to each soul. I had a good laugh with my wife when the author was going through the programmer classifications. Some of them fit me to a T, mostly those about lack of social skills. Other classifications fit my co-workers perfectly as well.

Another detail that will hit you like a ton of bricks when you start reading the book is that the author is "southern folk", and he's got every southern proverb and cliché to back it. This makes the subject of management somewhat funner to read.

I am not gonna bore you with the list of contents, read it yourself. I simply want to express my reaction to the book and what I've learned.

The truth is that I have more fun programming than managing "cats" or herd or whatever. But given the current trend to outsourcing, I gotta find a way to pay my mortgage and stay in the game at the same time. So in reading Hank's book I realized some of the changes that I need to make to be an effective leader. First of all, I have this tendency to just want to do it all myself. If someone writes crappy code, I'd rather spend 2 days rewriting it rather then 1 day of explaining to the moron what an enterprize app looks like. In other words, delegation. The book basically convinced me to smell the indian food and change my ways.

Other managerial skills, I found, I have in abundance, like the need to avoid unnecessary meetings. Those meetings that do happen need to focus on the agenda instead of who is going to win on Survivor.

The book reads very easily and could be handled in a couple of days of light reading. The intro is actually right on target: it says that the first several chapters are worth the money you paid for the book. That's correct - it gives you a general look at what management is. The rest of the chapter is a detailed look at various disciplines and pitfals of management.

Bottom line, if you are a programmer who leads programmers, this book will be money well spent.