21 Rules of Thumb – How Microsoft develops its Software, by Jim McCarthy, is a most excellent read.
One of my favorites is “Don't go Dark”. Which goes hand-in-hand with “Beware of a guy in a room.”. I've been that guy in a room before.
Basically what those two points mean is open communication between your team is crucial.
Specialist developers who lock themselves away in a room, going dark for long stretches, are anathema to shipping great software on time. Without regard to their individual brilliance, before investing a developer with a significant assignment, it is essential that they understand and agree with the type of development program you intend to run. They must be capable of performing on a team, making their work visible in modest increments and subjecting it to scrutiny as it matures. Some people find this intolerable, and though there is a role for people of this disposition in the software world, it is not as part of a team devoted to shipping great software on time.
I've run into many of these issues over the years, and I'm fairly surprised as to how wrong I was in many instances.
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Posted at 06:43 AM