Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders (Paperback)

by Andrew Stellman (Author), Jennifer Greene (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product 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#.

About the Author
Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene are both veteran software engineers and project managers. They created Stellman & Greene Consulting in 2003, with a focus on project management, software development, management consulting, and software process improvement. Andrew and Jennifer have worked in a wide range of industries, including finance, telecommunications, media, non-profit, entertainment, natural language processing, science and academia.

Their first book, Applied Software Project Management, was published by O'Reilly Media in 2005 and has been widely praised by project managers, software engineers and academics. Their second book, Head First PMP, was called "the very best basic education and training book that I have read" by Dennis Bolles, the project manager and lead author of the Project Management Institute's PMBOK® Guide. And their third book, Head First C#, is one of the most popular book for learning C#, Windows programming and object oriented programming and design. They regularly speak at schools, companies and professional organizations on project management, quality, software development and process improvement.

Jennifer Greene studied philosophy in college but, like everyone else in the field, couldn't find a job doing it. Luckily, she's a great software tester, so she started out doing it at an online service, and that's the first time she got a good sense of what project management was. She moved to New York in 1998 to test software at a financial software company. She managed a team of testers at a really cool startup that did artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Since then, she's managed large teams of programmers, testers, designers, architects, and other engineers on lots of projects, and she's done a whole bunch of procurement management. She loves traveling, watching Bollywood movies, drinking carloads of carbonated beverages, and owing a whippet. For more information about Jennifer, Andrew Stellman, and their books, visit http://www.stellman-greene.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 508 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1 edition (May 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596518021
• ISBN-13: 978-0596518028
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #190,301 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something for absolutely everyone, June 28, 2009

By	Jim Brosseau - See all my reviews

This is a brilliant book, capped off with an excellent interview with record producer Tony Visconti, who reveals that the principles behind great teams transcend the genre of software development. From the value of knowing his people to diligent tracking of work charts built by everyone and collaboration in general, it is no surprise that that Tony's experience with musicians sounds a lot like a great software project. He admonishes that we should all devote our downtime to learning new stuff, and this book provides plenty of insights for any of us.

The many contributors step back from advancing their usual prescriptions to celebrate their own successes (and yes, challenges) within teams. In this celebration, they provide some of the best insights that we can carry forward into our own careers.

Whether Jennifer Greene draws wondrous team memories from the ashes of a dot-com failure, Keoki Andrus' shares a healthy respect for innovation and creative play to inspire a team, or engaging stories by Karl Wiegers and many others capture great team experiences, the variety in Beautiful Teams will keep you rapt like few other technical books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uneven writing, great content, June 8, 2009

By	James Holmes "Co-Author 'Windows Developer Po... (South Central Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book's a good read and a nice addition to your bookshelf, although its uneven writing style and fractured voice detract from some great tidbits.

Beautiful Teams is a collection of interviews and essays by various folks in and around the software industry. Each chapter is a great interview with folks like Steve McConnell or Scott Ambler, or an essay-like article from Mike Cohn or Corey Doctorow. Chapters are slotted into broad sections dealing with individuals, goals, practices, obstacles, and music - as in how parallels can be drawn between musicians in a band and members of software teams.

The uneven writing style and fractured voice can be somewhat expected since each author wrote their own articles, but tighter editing could have really polished up the chapters and made the book more cohesive. The tone of many of the articles made it seem they were drawn directly from the authors' blogs - another point for having had some tighter editing. I also wished that each chapter had an introduction/bio about the author. While these people are supposed industry leaders, there were quite a few authors I wasn't familiar with, so I was left wondering what their accomplishments were that made them a target to get in the book.

Complaints aside, I got very good value from reading the book. The wisdom in several articles around dealing with team dynamics was exceedingly useful, and I also found it good backup to read industry leaders pointing out it's important to move poor performers or negative influences off teams.

Several chapters really stood out for me: Grady Booch's interview on creating team cultures, James Grenning's article on implementing extreme programming (XP) in a heavily bureaucratic shop during XP's early days, and Steve McConnell's interview about improving team skills, morale, and practices.

Booch's interview really struck home due to his discussion of working on geographically distributed teams. I'm a remote worker and am far away from everyone I work with at Telligent, so this was particularly interesting to me. Booch's comments on the importance of trust between team members and dealing with cultural issues really struck home - he emphasized that technology isn't the limiting factor on poor-performing distributed teams.

Greening's experience pushing for change was a great read. The tone and style are clunky, but the content's gold. Greening was learning XP in its earliest days and worked hard to get an XP team going on a project in a very tight-laced, policy-ridden company. The number one takeaway from me from this article was something I'm already a huge believer in: culture change will utterly fail if you don't have management and leadership that actively supports the change.

I've yet to read anything from Steve McConnell that wasn't ridden with great wisdom, and his interview in this book certainly kept that tradition. His points on helping establish a team identity were highly useful. I loved his commentary on the asinine failure (my words) of companies to budget funds for team and morale building. It makes no sense that companies will spend millions on payroll, yet do nothing to build and grow team morale.

Overall I've really enjoyed reading this book. It's one of the few I'll keep around on my bookshelf.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful collection of stories about beautiful teams, July 8, 2009

By	Abby Fichtner "The Hacker Chick" (Moultonborough, NH USA) - See all my reviews

Beautiful Teams is a wonderful collection of stories by great names in software about their experiences with teams. From Mike Cohn, Scott Ambler, Grady Booch, Steve McConnell, Scott Berkun, Johanna Rothman, James Grenning... And even a few non-software folks who make the stories that much more compelling because they transcend discipline.

The book is broken into 4 main sections - one each for the primary themes that come up when talking about beautiful teams: People, Goals, Practices, and Obstacles. One of my favorites is Scott Berkun's Why Ugly Teams Win, which proclaims "real heroes are ugly. They are misfits." Citing as examples The Ramones, The Dirty Dozen, and The Bad News Bears. "Once the members of an ugly team have earned each others' trust, they will outperform the rest of any organization."

It's a book that can't help but make you smile as you think of your own experiences with great teams and what makes them so awesome to be part of. I don't know that there's the answer to how to build a beautiful team in here, it is more a book of tales. But it is definitely a topic we will do well to be thinking more about in software development and a fun book to read.

And, again, I love Scott Berkun's advice, "Stop complaining about your coworkers. Instead, get your team and your boss to read Beautiful Teams." Indeed!