Software for Your Head [Paperback]

Somehow books on releasing the greatness, beauty, and power of teams, always seem to strike glancing blows on real knowlede worker problems. In fact, most books won't come out and say that they want to change the world. Greatness, beauty, power, and such things come wrapped in such a mess of sociological, cultural, and managerial trouble, most books won't try to prescribe greatness et. al.

Not this one. This one wants it all. World domination in catalyzing teams that concquer. The book is worth its price for its "McCarthyized" sound bites alone. But, this is in fact, genius from another dimension. You may disagree with everything it says, and still read it from cover to cover and profit greatly from constant questioning, provocation, and counter intuitive-examples provided. And there is always the chance, that the McCarthys are right.

When I first read this book, I was struck with how silly or unnatural (to me) some of the protocols sounded. Always one eager to subvert the dominant paradigm, I usually feel this a sign that the author's saying something worth listening to. Jim's writing style is so matter-of-fact and direct that it contributed to me chuckling repeatedly thinking, "is this guy nuts?", but at the same time driving me to read further -- for all of which he said resonated with me at a deep level.

As you progress through the book, the reasons behind the patterns and protocols become clearer: we live in a world where it is considered ridiculous to express or leverage emotion in the work place, yet emotion is crucial to our nature & to creating works of high value. So -- use a set of practices that legislate the option of using of emotional information in your collaboration.

Of even more value to myself is the book's description of the anti-patterns. It took me quite a while to read this work as I've had to put the book down several times after reading the anti patterns, being so overwhelmed by the accuracy of what was being said, based on all the prior situations I've been in where leaders forced the team, or sometimes the whole company, down the path of perdition.

I can't think of a more important contribution to software development today. Even the agile methodologies like XP are important developments, but they don't go to as deep a level as this book does.

For any software professional or creative team leader, this book comes with my highest recommendation.

Form the base assumption that Team = Product, Jim and Michele McCarthy show us how to construct an environment in which teams connect quickly, gain shared vision, and proceed to ship great product. Using the pattern/anti-pattern approach, they show not only the common failings with in a team, but how to take steps to fix these problems.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is feeling the pain of trying to ship a software product on time, on budget. The lessons you learn in this book will set you on the path to vastly improving the quality of your professional life, and the quality of the products you are required to ship.