The very first chapter I read concerned a software team which morphed into an improv comedy troupe which also wrote successful (for some definition of success) code. This narrative was so funny that I was nearly in tears by the end. I would not be surprised to see the "turducken" software model or theoretical scatology enter the geek lexicon as a result. It alone is worth the price of the book, though it is also worth noting that proceeds from about every 3000 copies sold will be used to purchase a PlayPump to provide clean drinking water to a developing area.
My impression of this book is that it is the one that Andrew Stellman wishes he had read prior to turning down that project management promotion the first time. A pithy variant on that sentence would be a more appropriate title for the book. But as it is part of O'Reilly's "Beautiful <noun>: <descriptive keywords>" brand, that was clearly not possible. Stellman and Greene both include first hand vignettes from their early careers and contribute to the interviews. But in the interviews, Greene's questions are fashioned in a more mainstream interviewer-subject style. Stellman's questions often employ a more personal style as though you were witness to selected conversations he'd had since transitioning to project management.
The interview format is less than 50% of the book, with the balance being vignettes and essays from the contributors told from a first person perspective about particularly memorable teams they worked with. Many of the authors are not "famous", some have not previously been published and at least one was not a "leader". I can't think of a single one that was not worth reading. In some cases the contributions tend toward tranche de vie, rather than an abstracted discussion of the operation of the team. Because these lack a strict "how we did/didn't do it" format, you might suspect they'd detract from a "how to build a better team" format.
You'd be wrong on two counts, however. The first is that they break up the structure of the standard business literature, making the book overall very easy to read. In fact, the first day I read one chapter at random and then skipped around and read a "few" more. The next day, when I inventoried what I had read, I found that I had actually consumed more than a third of the entire book! The second count is that taken in aggregate, these tranches de vie allow you to start picking out patterns that are not necessarily apparent in any single contribution. In this way the book successfully "creates a context in which other people can think**"
The editing is a little lax, but I did not find it too intrusive, though there are a couple of missing transition paragraphs which ought to be included in future editions.
*Quote from the interview with Tim O'Reilly.
** Tim O'Reilly quoting Edwin Schlossberg
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Pierre Fauvel
Un pack concentré d'expérience sur la gestion d'équipes
Reviewed in France on September 11, 2010