Beautiful Teams

Book description

What's it like to work on a great software development team facing an impossible problem? How do you build an effective team? Can a group of people who don't get along still build good software? How does a team leader keep everyone on track when the stakes are high and the schedule is tight? Beautiful Teams takes you behind the scenes with some of the most interesting teams in software engineering history. You'll learn from veteran team leaders' successes and failures, told through a series of engaging personal stories -- and interviews -- by leading programmers, architects, project managers, and thought leaders. This book includes contributions from:

  • Tim O'Reilly

  • Scott Berkun

  • Mark Healey

  • Bill DiPierre

  • Andy Lester

  • Keoki Andrus

  • Tom Tarka

  • Auke Jilderda

  • Grady Booch

  • Jennifer Greene

  • Mike Cohn

  • Cory Doctorow

  • Neil Siegel

  • Trevor Field

  • James Grenning

  • Steve McConnell

  • Barry Boehm and Maria H. Penedo

  • Peter Gluck

  • Karl E. Wiegers

  • Alex Martelli

  • Karl Fogel

  • Michael Collins

  • Karl Rehmer

  • Andrew Stellman

  • Ned Robinson

  • Scott Ambler

  • Johanna Rothman

  • Mark Denovich and Eric Renkey

  • Patricia Ensworth

  • Andy Oram

  • Tony Visconti

Beautiful Teams is edited by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene, veteran software engineers and project managers who have been writing bestselling books for O'Reilly since 2005, including Applied Software Project Management, Head First PMP, and Head First C#.

Table of contents

  1. Beautiful Teams
    1. Why Beautiful Teams?
      1. Why These Contributors?
    2. Preface
      1. How This Book Is Organized
        1. Part I, People
        2. Part II, Goals
        3. Part III, Practices
        4. Part IV, Obstacles
        5. Part V, Music
      2. How to Contact Us
      3. Safari® Books Online
      4. Acknowledgments
      5. About the Editors
    3. 1. Leadership
    4. I. People
      1. 2. Why Ugly Teams Win
        1. Ugly Talent
        2. Ugly As Beautiful
        3. My Wabi-Sabi Team: Internet Explorer 4.0
      2. 3. Building Video Games
      3. 4. Building the Perfect Team
      4. 5. What Makes Developers Tick
      5. 6. Inspiring People
      6. 7. Bringing the Music Industry into the 21st Century: One Lawsuit at a Time
        1. A New Project, A New Team
        2. A Calculated Risk …
        3. Gentlemen, Start Your Rippers…
        4. The Final Month
        5. I Am So Smart: S-M-R-T … S-M-A-R-T
        6. Engineering Department Smokes a Collective Cigarette
        7. Intermission: The Founding of a Panda Preserve
        8. "You Realists Can Stay the Hell Out of Our Office!"
        9. Not with a Bang, But with a Whimper …
        10. Epilogue
        11. Afterword
      7. 8. Inner Source
    5. II. Goals
      1. 9. Creating Team Cultures
      2. 10. Putting the "I" in Failure
      3. 11. Planning
      4. 12. The Copyfighters Take Mordor
      5. 13. Defending the Free World
      6. 14. Saving Lives
    6. III. Practices
      1. 15. Building a Team with Collaboration and Learning
        1. Selling Management
        2. Getting Started
        3. Growing the Team
        4. Pressing the Envelope and the Process Police
        5. Learning
        6. Requirements Versus On-Site Customer
        7. Trouble in River City
          1. Teams Are Made of People, Not Resources
        8. Companies Make Their Own Troubles
        9. Future Projects
        10. Collaboration Success Factors
        11. References
      2. 16. Better Practices
      3. 17. Memories of TRW's Software Productivity Project: A Beautiful Team, Challenged to Change the Culture
        1. Background on the Software Productivity Project
        2. Making the Project a Reality
          1. Getting Started: Being Ready with Options When Management Calls
          2. Evaluating and Selecting Options: Applying the Spiral Model
          3. Getting Started: A Balanced Team, a Committed Pilot Project, and the Niceties of Unix
        3. Project Stories
          1. The Team
          2. The Challenge
          3. Educating the Boss
          4. Can We Have a Private Office?
          5. Choice in Technologies: The Importance of Trade Studies
          6. Converting the "Guinea Pig" Project
          7. Standardization
          8. Users Should Be Part of the Team
          9. Making All Inclusive
          10. Training Managers, Not Your Usual Student
          11. Tasting Our Own Cooking
          12. Is Email a Boost or a Hindrance?
          13. Becoming Word Processors
          14. The Difficulties of Innovation, Timing, and Commercialization
          15. The Iron Law of Software Maintenance
          16. Champions
          17. The Challenges of the Rapid Change of Technology
          18. Learning and Assimilating Changes in User Behavior
        4. Conclusion
        5. References
        6. Acknowledgments
      4. 18. Building Spaceships
      5. 19. Succeeding with Requirements: A Drama in Three Acts
        1. The Setting
        2. The Cast
        3. Prologue: Paul Is in a Pickle
        4. Act I: Girding Our Loins
          1. Expectation Management
          2. Classy Users
          3. Who Ya Gonna Call?
        5. Act II: Use Cases, Schmuse Cases
          1. The Case for Use Cases
          2. Working in the Shop
          3. Use Cases Aren't Enough
          4. Beyond Functionality
          5. The Rules of the Game
          6. Test Before Coding? Are You Mad?
        6. Act III: Look Over My Shoulder
          1. The Casual Style
          2. The Formal Style
          3. The Outcome
        7. Epilogue: Let's Eat!
        8. Coda: Then What Happened?
        9. Useful References
        10. Acknowledgments
      6. 20. Development at Google
      7. 21. Teams and Tools
        1. How Open Source Projects Work
        2. The Contribulyzer
          1. The Catch
          2. The Limits of the Contribulyzer
        3. Commit Emails and Gumption Sinks
        4. They're Staying Away in Droves: A Tale of Two Translation Interfaces
          1. What I Gave Them
          2. What I Should Have Given Them
        5. Conclusion
      8. 22. Research Teams
      9. 23. The HADS Team
        1. The Background
        2. The Initial Team
        3. Getting It Right
        4. Dealing with User Issues
        5. Epilogue
    7. IV. Obstacles
      1. 24. Bad Boss
      2. 25. Welcome to the Process: Step Inside, Step Inside, and See the Show
      3. 26. Getting Past Obstacles
      4. 27. Speed Versus Quality: Why Do We Need to Choose?
        1. How Did We Get Here?
        2. About the Team
        3. Becoming Part of the Team
        4. Starting Off Right
        5. Solving Problems As a Team
        6. What Code Review Looked Like
        7. Unit Tests
        8. Check-ins
        9. Builds
        10. Schedules
        11. Status Reports
        12. Go Faster Now!
        13. Looking for More Speed
        14. Losing a Week at a Time
        15. What to Do Next
        16. Retaining Integrity
        17. The Rubber Meets the Road
        18. Success at Last
        19. Epilogue
        20. References
      5. 28. Tight, Isn't It?
        1. Only Pawn…in Game of Life, or "What's a Dazzling Urbanite Like You Doing in a Rustic Setting Like This?"
        2. CMM Level Subzero, or "Processes, We Don't Need No Stinking Processes!"
        3. The Brown Hole, or "I'd Say You've Had Enough"
        4. Some of These Envelopes Contain Stock Options, or "I'm Through Being Mr. Goodbar, the Time Has Come to Act and Act Quickly"
        5. The Blitz, or "Break's Over, Boys, Don't Just Lie There Gettin' a Suntan…"
        6. Our Invite to the Number Six Dance, or "What Is It That's Not Exactly Water and It Ain't Exactly Earth?"
        7. Epilogue, or "Nowhere Special…I Always Wanted to Go There"
      6. 29. Inside and Outside the Box
      7. 30. Compiling the Voice of a Team
        1. A Gem from the Computing Past
        2. Rewiring
        3. Coping
        4. Coding
        5. Capitulating
        6. The Break
        7. Anticipating 21st-Century Management
        8. Final Notes
    8. V. Music
      1. 31. Producing Music
      2. A. Contributors
    9. Colophon

Product information

  • Title: Beautiful Teams
  • Author(s): Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene
  • Release date: March 2009
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596518028