Leading Effective Software Teams
A systems thinking approach for engineering managers. Stop fixing problems in isolation and learn to lead product, engineering, and people as one system.
The LeanPub edition is an in-progress early release. Buy once and every future update is free.
"As AI makes code easier to produce, code output tells us less and less about real productivity. The most useful insight in the book is that leaders should focus on the system that turns ideas into customer value."
Engineering leadership should not be an infinite to-do list
The standard way to manage software engineering is to break the job into parts. We improve someone's performance, deliver a project, or run a process. But that makes the job harder, not easier. The list never ends, and every leader ends up hitting the same wall: there is always too much to do.
"How do I get time to do everything?" This is the question I hear most from the managers I work with. The answer is that you don't. You will not get to the bottom of the list by working through it faster.
You have to approach the problem from another angle. Instead of fixing each part in isolation, improving one person's performance here, rescuing one project there, you lead the whole. The product you build, the way you build it, and the people who build it. You manage them together rather than separately.
This book comes out of more than 20 years of doing that work and advising managers who do it. It proposes a framework, but not one with a fancy acronym. It is built on one of the oldest ways to handle complex problems: thinking in systems. It is not a recipe, but it will apply to any problem you face, from helping one engineer grow to evolving your team's architecture.
The content is opinionated and direct. You will not agree with all of it. But it will change how you see your team, how you lead it, and how you grow as an engineering leader.
Written for software builders.
- 01 Engineering managers early in their careersThe core reader. This book will give you the fundamentals to succeed in your new role.
- 02 Engineers moving into leadershipWhether as a tech lead or a manager, lead effectively before the title arrives.
- 03 Experienced engineering managersA structured way to revisit instincts you've built and find what you might be missing.
- 04 Product and design leadersAnyone who partners closely with software teams and wants to understand how to influence in the right direction.
From the problem to the practice.
- One The Challenge of Engineering Management Engineering management is hard. The way we look at it makes it harder. Available now
- Two There Is Always a System It doesn’t matter if you think about it or not. The systems in and around your team will define its success. Available now
- Three Systems Thinking for Engineering Managers Understanding systems is one thing. This is how you put them to work in your team. Available now
- Four Creating the Product How to partner with your peers and shape product decisions so engineering can do its best work. Coming soon
- Five Delivering Software By the time you're managing the crisis, you've already lost. How to design your team's work so the crisis never starts. Coming soon
- Six Managing People How to develop engineers and hand off real responsibility without losing the thread. Coming soon
- Epilogue It Will All Come Together You will not get it right the first time. A consistent way of thinking is what lets you keep improving. Coming soon
What readers are saying.
"A great gift for up and coming technical leaders. A fantastic book to give a manager early in their career, one who hasn't had the benefit of good mentors or larger teams to learn from."
"Good, modern and novel. An interesting and unique approach to the topic, full of examples from real life, given in a logical way."
"A lot of practical advice, simple language, and great real-life examples. This book helped me learn new practices I can apply in my job, even as a product manager working closely with a software team."
"Francisco offers a practical approach, helping leaders identify where work gets stuck, understand the bottlenecks that actually limit delivery, and focus improvement efforts on outcomes rather than activity."
"Even complex ideas about systems thinking are explained simply, without unnecessary terminology. You can tell that this was written by a practitioner, not a theorist."
I'm Francisco, an engineering leader with experience across many companies and countries. I'm currently Vice President of Engineering at Braze in New York, and I'm passionate about helping engineers collaborate effectively.
I started as a technology consultant at ThoughtWorks, helping teams all over the world, from startups in the UK to major enterprises in Australia. I've founded companies and led engineering organizations along the way, gaining insights into managing teams in very different settings.
This book is the distillation of what I've learned in years of trying to build effective teams and organizations.
Start reading today.
Get the early release now and get every future chapter and revision for free. Print and Kindle editions arrive September 2026.
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Read Chapter 1 free, and I will let you know when the full book lands in September.
Good to know.
An early version of the book is being published on LeanPub while the rest is being finished. Chapters one through three are available now, with a full launch arriving in September 2026. When you buy, you get the current version and every future update at no extra cost.
Yes. The price will change once the full book is released, so early readers pay the least. Once you've bought it, updates are always free.
The finished book, in print and Kindle, is planned for September 2026. Join the list above and I'll let you know the moment it's live.
The blog is where many of these ideas started but is hard to follow as a thread. The book reworks and expands them into a single, coherent argument, with new material on product, delivery, and people that isn't published anywhere else.
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