Beautiful Teams - Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders

What's it like to work on a great software development team facing an impossible problem? Beautiful Teams takes you behind the scenes with some of the most interesting software teams over the past 30 years. Through a series of fascinating personal stories from many of the industry's leading programmers, architects, project managers, and thought leaders, you'll go inside high-profile projects such as the development of Internet Explorer, the Boeing 777, Subversion, and some of the first Agile projects. Learn how extraordinary teams coped with challenges, and how their efforts led to superb -- or disastrous - results.

List of contents

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

About the author

Jennifer Greene, has spent the past 15 years or so building software for many different kinds of companies. She's worked for small start-ups and some huge companies along the way. She's built software test teams and helped lots of companies diagnose and deal with habitual process problems so that they could build better software. Since her start in software test and process definition, she's branched out into development management and project management. She's currently managing a big development team for a global media company and she's managed just about every aspect of software development through her career.Jennifer founded Stellman & Greene Consulting with Andrew Stellman in 2003, initially to serve the scientific and academic community. They have worked in a wide range of industries including finance, telecommunications, media, non-profit, entertainment, natural language processing, science and academia. They do speaking engagements, provide training on development practices, manage teams, and build software. Together, they've written two highly acclaimed books on project management Head First PMP and Applied Software Project Management, Head First C, and most recently just finished up Beautiful Teams

Summary

What's it like to work on a great software development team facing an impossible problem? This title takes you behind the scenes with some of the most interesting software teams over the years. It includes a series of personal stories from many of the industry's leading programmers, architects, project managers, and thought leaders.

Product details

• Authors: Jennifer Greene, Jennifer Greens, Andrew Stellman, Stellman Andrew
• Assisted by: Jennifer Greene (Editor), Andrew Stellman (Editor)
• Publisher: O'Reilly
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.04.2009
• EAN: 9780596518028
• ISBN: 978-0-596-51802-8
• No. of pages: 508
• Weight: 910 g
• Illustrations: w. ill.
• Series: THEORY IN PRACTICE
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > IT; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; Projektmanagement, project management, management, team, team management project management