Beautiful Teams
by Andrew Stellman; Jennifer Greene
Publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Pub Date: March 27, 2009
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-596-51802-8
Pages: 512
Review :
This is a book about Software teams, and is a set of essays by different authors. I recognize first chapters authoer (O’Reilly), and another author Scott Berkun who wrote an easy to ready book about software program management.
Overall decent book (didnt feel great to me). Very specific examples for software programmers mostly in small groups within large company (which of course covers 100k’s of folks if not milliones on planet at this point).
What i took Away from Book :
I wouldn’t mind reading through some of the stories in more detail when I have time. More of a relaxtion type thing then taking notes type of actvity.
– would make a good audio book to listen too at some point
Book Notes :
Introduction - Leadership - Tim O’Reilly
– quote “The skill of mgmt is achieving your objectives through efforts of others”
– talks about how some devices have ‘truths’ in them that is the right way ti shoudl be. Touch screen on ipod, EVDO in kindle. Can’t imagine it any other way
– talks about open source quite a bit
– having systems architected right, dont want team overtly dependent on single vision or leader
– calls out importance of aesthetic in business and in software
+ goal of science/religon is to build vision of an aesthetic people can believe in
+ gives examples of relationships with people that have common views of truths and aesthetics and how it helps build you up since you share accomplishments
–
Chapter 2 - Why Ugly Teams Win - Scott Berkun
– “Team comprimishing only of 4.0 GPA prodigies will never get ugly. Will never take big risks, never make big mistakes. Deep personal trust can not grow without mistakes, risks. For a team to make something beautiful there must be ugliness along the way. A team of beautiful perfect people, when face with pressure their selfish drives willt ear the team apart.
– Only use of beauty applied to teams taht makes sense is japanese concept of Wabi-sabi // special beauty found in things that have been used
Chatper 5 - What makes developers Tick - Andy Lester, Interview format,
– on Perl develoepr team
– ”geeks don’t gauge their audience well generally“
Part III - Practicies
– Two big risks that teams face when trying to adopt a new practice
1) practice is stupid, but person pushing it doesnt know it. e.g. useless status meetings
2) practice is good, but team doesnt get it, e.g. code reviews
– to put new practice in place need to convince everyone worth doing, and those that have to ‘pay’ either in $$ , in time, or other to see value.
Talk about extremen programming and agile programming
Chatper 21 - Teams and Tools - Karl Fogel
– impact of good tools on team’s ability to collaborate
– example tool for helping to detail quickly the contributions of an invidiual on open source projects - automated dashboard
– example showing that adding a few seconds overhead to a common task is enough to make the task uncommon
+ in code review email, have everything needed to minimize effort
–
Chapter on Google
Chapter on Boeing Software design