Software Engineering discussion

Once, I managed a team that this section would characterize as "jelled". I inherited the team, and I have no idea how it formed like this, and (like the book also admits) I have no idea how to create another one like it.

This team had all the characteristics described in this section, including high productivity, high morale, a little cliquish, sometimes negatively viewed by outside teams, and a desire to stick together for future projects. I think two additional factors helped them jell: the technical area was fairly specialized and the team used a different language than the rest of the company.

These are rare occurrences, but magical when they happen.

I think this was most interesting part of book so far. I’ve never seen such a “jelled” team yet. Authors make it clear what a “jelled” team is and provide some hints about team formation process and existence. I’m not really into business psychology, but it would definitely be interesting to read more about “jelled” team dynamics. I mean it would be interesting to find out more about such team from a person who actually works or used to work in such team. There are many examples of such teams but outside of business environment, so this is what makes it interesting for me.

My best experience working in a team was a few years ago. It wasn’t an official team or anything: we just had total of 4 people working on a same project, and every person was specializing in different areas. It wasn’t too much involvement of senior staff in development. None of us had a lot of experience, but customers didn’t seem to be too bothered because we were able to satisfy their “needs and wants” on a go very quickly. I guess the best part of that experience was that none of us felt “too important”, so we didn’t make each other wait even though that project wasn’t the only responsibility we had. I’m not really sure if we even completed that project “on time and in budget”, but I think it was a success because we had a good response from a customer and we had subsequent contracts with them to expand product’s features.

My favorite phrase of this chapter is “it’s only the right to be wrong that makes you free”.