Software for Your Head

Software for Your Head

by JIM McCARTHY, MICHELE McCARTHY
Released December 2001
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 0201604566

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Most people have experienced--at least once in their lives--the incomparable thrill of being part of a great team effort. They can remember the unity of purpose they experienced, the powerful passion that inspired them, and the incredible results they achieved. People who have been on a great team can attest that the difference between being on a team with a shared vision and being on a team without one is the difference between joy and misery.

In 1996, Jim and Michele McCarthy, after successful careers leading software development teams at Microsoft and elsewhere, set out to discover a set of repeatable group behaviors that would always lead to the formation of a state of shared vision for any team. They hoped for a practical, communicable, and reliable process that could be used to create the best possible teams every time it was applied. They established a hands-on laboratory for the study and teaching of high-performance teamwork. In a controlled simulation environment, their principle research and teaching effort--the McCarthy Software Development BootCamp--challenged dozens of real-world, high-tech teams to produce and deliver a product. Teams were given a product development assignment, and instructed to form a team, envision the product, agree on how to make it, then design, build, and ship it on time. By repeating these simulations time after time, with the new teams building on the learning from previous teams, core practices emerged that were repeatedly successful. These were encoded as patterns and protocols.

Software for Your Head is the first publication of the most significant results of the authors' unprecedented five-year investigation into the dynamics of contemporary teams. The information in this book will provide a means for any team to create for itself a compelling state of shared vision.



0201604566B09042001

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  3. INTRODUCTION
  4. Check In
    1. The Elements of Check In
      1. OVERCOMING DISTANCE
      2. THE CHECK IN PROTOCOL
      3. THE CHECK OUT PROTOCOL
      4. THE PASSER PROTOCOL
      5. CONNECTION
      6. PROBLEM BEHAVIORS
      7. PATTERNS SYNERGISTIC WITH CHECK IN
    2. Check In Patterns and Protocols
      1. PATTERN: CHECK IN
      2. ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION OF CHECK IN
      3. PATTERN: CHECK OUT
      4. PATTERN: PASSER
      5. PATTERN: CONNECTION
    3. Check In Antipatterns
      1. ANTIPATTERN: TOO EMOTIONAL
      2. ANTIPATTERN: NO HURT FEELINGS
      3. ANTIPATTERN: WRONG TOLERANCE
    4. Other Patterns in the Check In Family
      1. PATTERN: TEAM = PRODUCT
      2. PATTERN: SELF-CARE
      3. PATTERN: THINKING AND FEELING
      4. PATTERN: PRETEND
      5. PATTERN: THE GREATNESS CYCLE
  5. Decider
    1. The Elements of Decider
      1. OTHER DECISION-RELATED ELEMENTS
      2. ANTIPATTERNS
    2. Decider Patterns and Protocols
      1. PATTERN: DECIDER
      2. PATTERN: RESOLUTION
      3. PATTERN: WORK WITH INTENTION
      4. PATTERN: ECOLOGY OF IDEAS
    3. Decider Antipatterns
      1. ANTIPATTERN: RESOLUTION AVOIDANCE
      2. ANTIPATTERN: OBLIVION
      3. ANTIPATTERN: TURF
      4. ANTIPATTERN: BOSS WON'T GIVE POWER
      5. ANTIPATTERN: TEAM QUACKERY
  6. Aligning
    1. The Elements of Alignment
      1. PERSONAL AND TEAM ALIGNMENT
    2. Alignment Pattern and Protocol
      1. PATTERN: ALIGNMENT
    3. Alignment Antipatterns
      1. ANTIPATTERN: NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE
      2. ANTIPATTERN: ALIGN ME
    4. Alignment Patterns
      1. PATTERN: PERSONAL ALIGNMENT
      2. HOW AND WHY ALIGNMENT WORKS
      3. PATTERN: INVESTIGATE
      4. PATTERN: RECEPTIVITY
      5. PATTERN: WEB OF COMMITMENT
      6. PATTERN: ASK FOR HELP
  7. Shared Vision
    1. The Elements of Shared Vision
      1. ASPECTS OF SHARED VISION
      2. PATTERNS INVOLVED IN THE SHARED VISION PROCESS
    2. Shared Vision Patterns and Protocols
      1. PATTERN: SHARED VISION
      2. PATTERN: METAVISION
      3. PATTERN: FAR VISION
      4. PATTERN: VERSION
    3. Shared Vision Antipatterns
      1. ANTIPATTERN: BLINDER
      2. ANTIPATTERN: TECHNICALITY
      3. ANTIPATTERN: RECOIL
      4. ANTIPATTERN: FEEDBACK
    4. The Perfection Game Pattern
      1. PLAYING AND PERFECTING
  8. Appendixes
    1. The Core Lexicon
      1. Glossary
    2. BootCamp Material
      1. YOU AND YOUR PARTICIPATION IN BOOTCAMP
      2. MISCELLANEOUS BOOTCAMP INFORMATION
      3. WHAT WE WANT YOU TO LEARN IN YOUR FIRST BOOTCAMP
      4. ANSWER KEY
      5. BOOTCAMP IS NOT THERAPY
    3. The Core Protocols V. 1.0
      1. THE CORE PROTOCOLS
      2. LICENSE AGREEMENT
  9. ARTWORK
  10. AUTHORS

Product information

  • Title: Software for Your Head
  • Author(s): JIM McCARTHY, MICHELE McCARTHY
  • Release date: December 2001
  • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
  • ISBN: 0201604566