Software Project Development Teams

Team Organization Goal: organize teams so that they are productive teams can be used in every phase, especially implementation two extreme approaches: –democratic team –chief programmer team

Democratic Team Group works for a common cause with no single leader; each member finds faults in others’ code advantages –positive attitude towards finding faults –especially productive in solving hard problems disadvantages –management has difficulty working with egoless team –senior members may resent review by beginners

Chief Programmer Team Introduced in the 70’s, in the keypunch days chief programmer –directs and reviews work of other team members –does design and complex implementations backup chief programmer other programmers –specialized; work on detailed design and coding programming secretary (librarian) –maintains project library (code, test cases, etc.) –compiles, executes and runs test cases

Impracticality of chief programmer approach Good chief programmers are hard to find –must be both good programmer and good manager Good backup chief programmers are even harder to find Nowadays programmers compile, run and test their software at their workstations Disadvantage: chief is present at code reviews and also does evaluation of members; doesn’t foster positive attitude toward finding faults

Combined approach (Modern Team) Team leader –responsible for technical aspects –attends all code reviews team manager –responsible for non-technical aspects (budget, performance appraisals) –does not attend code reviews, but assesses performance based on periodic team meetings can be scaled up for large projects decentralize decision-making

Synchronize-and-Stabilize Team Used by Microsoft Corp. Work is divided into several builds; first build is for most critical features Each build carried out by a number of small teams working in parallel All teams synchronize daily by putting partially completed components together, testing, debugging Stabilize at the end of each build Advantages: –ensures components work together –get early insight into operation of the product

Synchronize and Stabilize Team Organization Program manager leads each team 3 to 8 developers per team 3 to 8 testers work one-on-one with developers Team is given specifications, team members design and implement their portion Must meet at regular times for synchronization advantages: –promotes individual creativity –daily synchronization promotes communication and coordination