Rowland K. Powerful, Profitable Software Products: The Executive Guidebook

CRC Press, 2025. — 247 p. — ISBN: 978-1-032-46672-9.You hold in your hands a comprehensive guide to creating a flourishing software development practice – one that makes a powerful impact with the software it builds. This guide describes the unique aspects of creating software-based products. It also lays out the clear practical guidance that’s necessary to construct and evolve a modern practice. This includes hiring, structuring teams properly, writing good code, leveraging test-driven development, designing architecture, automating development processes with DevOps techniques, and – importantly – leading teams through the disruptive change that each of these can represent. Further, the first principles upon which these practices rest will be elaborated so that the reader can readily adapt the already practical techniques to the broadest possible set of real-world situations.Skill with workflow automation brings a very direct impact to our delivery speed. This is because when we discuss workflow automation, we ask how to remove as much manual work as possible from the task of building and operating software. Several terms have a connection to this work – “DevOps” and “CI/CD” being two of the most common. It's important when we do discuss these important ideas, though, that we are dealing with them generally. I believe that the idea of “Workflow Automation” captures this general concept more accurately – even if the name isn’t as unique and “techy” sounding. There are two distinct things we do when we write code – we decide what code should be written, and then we enter that code into a computer. In both of these cases, we can get a great deal of help from automation.Tools.
Deciding on the code to write – This activity can be assisted with search engines like Google or more comprehensively with generative AI tooling like ChatGPT or GitHub's CoPilot. Both of these classes of tooling are constantly being enhanced and will likely offer more and more automation with this early development task.
Entering the code into the computer – There are several high-quality “Integrated Development Environments” (IDEs for short) that offer automation from syntax highlighting to code formatting to rapid building and testing capabilities.Groundwork
The Problem.
Ways of Knowing.
The Two Systems.
Leading Software Development
Leadership.
Building the People and Technology System.
Principles.
Tactical Competence.
Areas of Competence
Areas of Competence: Overview.
Areas of Competence: Craftsmanship.
Areas of Competence: People and Process.
Areas of Competence: Architecture.
Areas of Competence: Workflow Automation.
Bringing It All Together
Starting the New Development Shop.
Enhancing the Existing Development Shop.
Scaling the Small Development Shops.
Simplification: Continuously Starting, Enhancing, and Scaling.
A Complete Mental Model for the Engineering Organization.