A selection of the most interesting leadership resources that I have recently encountered (both general and IT-related). Feel free to submit your own proposals in the comments.

General

• 10 Rock Solid Truths About Management vs. Leadership by Dan McCarthy. Even if you tend to use these words interchangeably like I do, it’s worth reading about the two types of duties that need to be present in our work.
• Not Everyone Appreciates Your Type of Appreciation by Dr. Paul White. An article about the importance of considering your employees’ preferences when appreciating them.
• What You Should Know About Developing a Thick Skin by Keenan Patram. An important ‘skill’ to have, especially for managers.
• 20 Clues That You Might be a Micromanager by Dan McCarthy. Take the quiz!
• 10 Big Ideas from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by J.D. Meier. Even if you read the legendary book, it’s worth to refresh your memory.
• How to Effortlessly Focus For 2.5 Hours at a Stretch by Andrew Long.
• The Top 10 Challenges a Manager Will Face by Dan McCarthy. If you haven’t encountered most of them yet, be prepared.

IT

• Scrum Alliance, Scrum Inc., Scrum.org Endorse The Scrum Guide. A new website ScrumGuides.org has been announced as the new home for the Scrum Guide, with support from major Scrum organizations.
• A Value System for Code Reviews, and How to Scale Them for a Large Project. Roy Osherove describes a process improvement that he advised to one company recently. Most of Roy’s conclusions align with my own thoughts on code reviews, described in my previous blog post.
• Why Continuous Deployment May Mean Continuous Customer Disappointment. Steve Blank warns us that implementing Continuous Delivery/Deployment is not an easy step, and you need to remember about your customer when making such transition.
• The Main Benefit of Story Points by Mike Cohn.
• ARM Yourself for Enterprise Application Development by Mark Collins-Cope. The author describes an Architecture Reference Model for large-scale applications, along with some practical implementation tips.
• DevOps in Telecoms – Is It Possible? by Joachim Bauernberger. Challenges and guidelines for implementing DevOps in this particular industry.
• Fear Driven Development – FDD by Scott Hanselman.
• Handling Requests for Unnecessary Artifacts by Mike Cohn. Some tips on how to approach the situation when a Scrum team is asked to deliver additional documentation etc.