Synopses & Reviews
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#.
Synopsis
Bringing together highly recognized programmers and team leaders to explain management through entertaining stories, this work addresses the topics of managing people and bringing projects to a successful conclusion.
Synopsis
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. Contributors include: Scott Berkun, bestselling author of Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen and former Microsoft Program Manager Barry Boehm, a developer at TRW in the 1980s and software engineering pioneer Patricia Ensworth, author of The Accidental Project Manager Karl Wiegers, author and principal consultant with Process Impact Karl Rhemer, a developer on the Boeing 777 project Ned Robinson, Sofware Development Life Cycle Mentor and Practice Leader, Bowne Management Systems James Grenning, engineer, consultant, and original signer of the Agile Manifesto Karl Fogel, formerly of CollabNet, Inc. and Google Inc., and part of the team that built Subversion Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, science fiction author, and copyright activist
This is not simply another book on the right and wrong ways to build software. Beautiful Teams offers contributions from people who made software engineering history. It's a must for people who have been part of a software development team, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in compelling stories about teamwork.
Synopsis
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'ReillyScott BerkunMark HealeyBill DiPierreAndy LesterKeoki AndrusTom TarkaAuke JilderdaGrady BoochJennifer GreeneMike CohnCory DoctorowNeil SiegelTrevor FieldJames GrenningSteve McConnellBarry Boehm and Maria H. PenedoPeter GluckKarl E. WiegersAlex MartelliKarl FogelMichael CollinsKarl RehmerAndrew StellmanNed RobinsonScott AmblerJohanna RothmanMark Denovich and Eric RenkeyPatricia EnsworthAndy OramTony 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#.
About the Author
Andrew, despite being raised a New Yorker, has lived in Minneapolis, Geneva, and Pittsburgh... twice. The first time was when he graduated from Carnegie Mellons School of Computer Science, and then again when he and Jenny were starting their consulting business and writing their first book for OReilly. He and Jenny first worked together at a company on Wall Street that built financial software, where he was managing a team of programmers. Over the years hes been a Vice President at a major investment bank, architected large-scale real-time back end systems, managed large international software teams, and consulted for companies, schools, and organizations, including Microsoft, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and MIT. Hes had the privilege working with some pretty amazing programmers during that time, and likes to think that hes learned a few things from them.
Bestselling O'Reilly authors Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman have been building software and writing about software engineering together since they first met in 1998. Their first book, Applied Software Project Management, was published by OReilly in 2005. Other Stellman and Greene books for OReilly include Beautiful Teams (2009), and their first book in the Head First series, Head First PMP (2007). They founded Stellman & Greene Consulting in 2003 to build a really neat software project for scientists studying herbicide exposure in Vietnam vets. In addition to building software and writing books, theyve provided training and consulted for companies and spoken at conferences and meetings of software engineers, architects and project managers.
Jenny studied philosophy in college but, like everyone else in the field, couldnt find a job doing it. Luckily, shes a great software engineer, so she started out working at an online service, and thats the first time she really got a good sense of what good software development looked like. She moved to New York in 1998 to work on software quality at a financial software company. Shes managed a teams of developers, testers and PMs on software projects in media and finance since then. Shes traveled all over the world to work with different software teams and build all kinds of cool projects.
Table of Contents
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 1: Leadership; Part I: People; Chapter 2: Why Ugly Teams Win; 2.1 Ugly Talent; 2.2 Ugly As Beautiful; 2.3 My Wabi-Sabi Team: Internet Explorer 4.0; Chapter 3: Building Video Games; Chapter 4: Building the Perfect Team; Chapter 5: What Makes Developers Tick; Chapter 6: Inspiring People; Chapter 7: Bringing the Music Industry into the 21st Century: One Lawsuit at a Time; 7.1 A New Project, A New Team; 7.2 A Calculated Risk ...; 7.3 Gentlemen, Start Your Rippers...; 7.4 The Final Month; 7.5 I Am So Smart: S-M-R-T ... S-M-A-R-T; 7.6 Engineering Department Smokes a Collective Cigarette; 7.7 Intermission: The Founding of a Panda Preserve; 7.8 "You Realists Can Stay the Hell Out of Our Office!"; 7.9 Not with a Bang, But with a Whimper ...; 7.10 Epilogue; 7.11 Afterword; Chapter 8: Inner Source; Part II: Goals; Chapter 9: Creating Team Cultures; Chapter 10: Putting the "I" in Failure; Chapter 11: Planning; Chapter 12: The Copyfighters Take Mordor; Chapter 13: Defending the Free World; Chapter 14: Saving Lives; Part III: Practices; Chapter 15: Building a Team with Collaboration and Learning; 15.1 Selling Management; 15.2 Getting Started; 15.3 Growing the Team; 15.4 Pressing the Envelope and the Process Police; 15.5 Learning; 15.6 Requirements Versus On-Site Customer; 15.7 Trouble in River City; 15.8 Companies Make Their Own Troubles; 15.9 Future Projects; 15.10 Collaboration Success Factors; 15.11 References; Chapter 16: Better Practices; Chapter 17: Memories of TRW's Software Productivity Project: A Beautiful Team, Challenged to Change the CultureEditors' note: if you've worked on a software team in the past 20 years, you have been influenced by Barry Boehm. He was one of the first people to take a systematic approach to estimating and planning software projects. And many people (including us) believe that his pioneering Spiral Model is the direct predecessor to the modern idea of iterative development.; 17.1 Background on the Software Productivity Project; 17.2 Making the Project a Reality; 17.3 Project Stories; 17.4 Conclusion; 17.5 References; 17.6 Acknowledgments; Chapter 18: Building Spaceships; Chapter 19: Succeeding with Requirements: A Drama in Three Acts; 19.1 The Setting; 19.2 The Cast; 19.3 Prologue: Paul Is in a Pickle; 19.4 Act I: Girding Our Loins; 19.5 Act II: Use Cases, Schmuse Cases; 19.6 Act III: Look Over My Shoulder; 19.7 Epilogue: Let's Eat!; 19.8 Coda: Then What Happened?; 19.9 Useful References; 19.10 Acknowledgments; Chapter 20: Development at Google; Chapter 21: Teams and Tools; 21.1 How Open Source Projects Work; 21.2 The Contribulyzer; 21.3 Commit Emails and Gumption Sinks; 21.4 They're Staying Away in Droves: A Tale of Two Translation Interfaces; 21.5 Conclusion; Chapter 22: Research Teams; Chapter 23: The HADS Team; 23.1 The Background; 23.2 The Initial Team; 23.3 Getting It Right; 23.4 Dealing with User Issues; 23.5 Epilogue; Part IV: Obstacles; Chapter 24: Bad Boss; Chapter 25: Welcome to the Process: Step Inside, Step Inside, and See the Show; Chapter 26: Getting Past Obstacles; Chapter 27: Speed Versus Quality: Why Do We Need to Choose?; 27.1 How Did We Get Here?; 27.2 About the Team; 27.3 Becoming Part of the Team; 27.4 Starting Off Right; 27.5 Solving Problems As a Team; 27.6 What Code Review Looked Like; 27.7 Unit Tests; 27.8 Check-ins; 27.9 Builds; 27.10 Schedules; 27.11 Status Reports; 27.12 Go Faster Now!; 27.13 Looking for More Speed; 27.14 Losing a Week at a Time; 27.15 What to Do Next; 27.16 Retaining Integrity; 27.17 The Rubber Meets the Road; 27.18 Success at Last; 27.19 Epilogue; 27.20 References; Chapter 28: Tight, Isn't It?; 28.1 Only Pawn...in Game of Life, or "What's a Dazzling Urbanite Like You Doing in a Rustic Setting Like This?"; 28.2 CMM Level Subzero, or "Processes, We Don't Need No Stinking Processes!"; 28.3 The Brown Hole, or "I'd Say You've Had Enough"; 28.4 Some of These Envelopes Contain Stock Options, or "I'm Through Being Mr. Goodbar, the Time Has Come to Act and Act Quickly"; 28.5 The Blitz, or "Break's Over, Boys, Don't Just Lie There Gettin' a Suntan..."; 28.6 Our Invite to the Number Six Dance, or "What Is It That's Not Exactly Water and It Ain't Exactly Earth?"; 28.7 Epilogue, or "Nowhere Special...I Always Wanted to Go There"; Chapter 29: Inside and Outside the Box; Chapter 30: Compiling the Voice of a Team; 30.1 A Gem from the Computing Past; 30.2 Rewiring; 30.3 Coping; 30.4 Coding; 30.5 Capitulating; 30.6 The Break; 30.7 Anticipating 21st-Century Management; 30.8 Final Notes; Part V: Music; Chapter 31: Producing Music; Contributors; Colophon;