Beautiful Teams

Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders

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 Authors
Andrew Stellman, despite being raised a New Yorker, has lived in Pittsburgh twice. The first time was when he graduated from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, and then again when he and Jenny were starting their consulting business and writing their first project management book for O'Reilly. When he moved back to his hometown, his first job after college was as a programmer at EMI-Capitol Records--which actually made sense, since he went to LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts to study cello and jazz bass guitar. He and Jenny first worked together at that same financial software company, where he was managing a team of programmers. He's since managed various teams of software engineers, requirements analysts, and led process improvement efforts. Andrew keeps himself busy eating an enormous amount of string cheese and Middle Eastern desserts, playing music (but video games even more), studying taiji and aikido, having a girlfriend named Lisa, and owing a pomeranian. For more information about Andrew, Jennifer Greene, and their books, visit http://www.stellman-greene.com.

Jennifer Greene, has spent the past 15 years or so building software for many different kinds of companies. She's worked for small start-ups and some huge companies along the way. She's built software test teams and helped lots of companies diagnose and deal with habitual process problems so that they could build better software. Since her start in software test and process definition, she's branched out into development management and project management. She's currently managing a big development team for a global media company and she's managed just about every aspect of software development through her career.

Jennifer founded Stellman & Greene Consulting with Andrew Stellman in 2003, initially to serve the scientific and academic community. They have worked in a wide range of industries including finance, telecommunications, media, non-profit, entertainment, natural language processing, science and academia. They do speaking engagements, provide training on development practices, manage teams, and build software. Together, they've written two highly acclaimed books on project management Head First PMP and Applied Software Project Management, Head First C#, and most recently just finished up Beautiful Teams.

For more information about Jennifer, Andrew Stellman, and their books, visit http://www.stellman-greene.com.