After successful careers at Microsoft creating leading software titles like Visual C++, Michele and Jim McCarthy have turned to telling others what it takes to build great teams. Their BootCamp, a five-day intensive-training/simulation session, allows teams to acquire new ways of communicating and working together based on patterns for successful teams. Drawing from their experiences with real developers and their training sessions, the McCarthys have published Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision (Addison-Wesley), which outlines their vision for great project management, as well as concrete steps, or protocols, that will help development teams work better together.

Amazon.com: Software for Your Head is based on both your extensive experience as developers and managers at Microsoft and elsewhere, as well as your boot camps run with numerous teams to foster better productivity and communication. How did both of these experiences contribute to the writing of this book?  

Michele and Jim McCarthy: Microsoft was a fantastic place to explore team dynamics because the company was comprised of nothing but teams, because the culture had such vitality, and because it was very focused on results....

After successful careers at Microsoft creating leading software titles like Visual C++, Michele and Jim McCarthy have turned to telling others what it takes to build great teams. Their BootCamp, a five-day intensive-training/simulation session, allows teams to acquire new ways of communicating and working together based on patterns for successful teams. Drawing from their experiences with real developers and their training sessions, the McCarthys have published Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision (Addison-Wesley), which outlines their vision for great project management, as well as concrete steps, or protocols, that will help development teams work better together.

Amazon.com: Software for Your Head is based on both your extensive experience as developers and managers at Microsoft and elsewhere, as well as your boot camps run with numerous teams to foster better productivity and communication. How did both of these experiences contribute to the writing of this book?  

Michele and Jim McCarthy: Microsoft was a fantastic place to explore team dynamics because the company was comprised of nothing but teams, because the culture had such vitality, and because it was very focused on results....

Interview with Software Team Management Experts Jim and Michele McCarthy

Informit.com

Question: How is this book different from other books on managing software teams?

Primarily because of how it came to be. In 1996, after years of management, development, marketing, and program manager gigs at Microsoft and elsewhere, we decided to figure out once and for all the key dynamics of teamwork. We created a teamwork laboratory called Software Development BootCamp. BootCamp is a laboratory in that every BootCamp is experimental. It's a team formation and product development simulation that lasts a week. First, we give every team an assignment, the same one we've given every team: Design, implement, and deliver a course that teaches you everything you need to know to ship great products on time, every time. We tell them up front (in a manual) everything we know so far about how to form a great team and ship a product in a week (the manual is revised pretty much every BootCamp). And we require that they ship a great product five days later. Has to be great. Has to be on time. In those five days, they use what all the other teams have learned, what we have learned, and whatever they discover on their own, to achieve their goals. Those practices that work are continuously refined and rereleased the next time (In our willingness to accept new practices that are successful and our willingness to throw out what isn't, we have been called "ruthlessly empirical.") Hundreds of some of the brightest developers in the world experimented with and worked on these practices over the years. The complete set of them, which is called The Core, Version 1.0, is the software in Software for Your Head.

As BootCamp developed, we could see that being on a team in BootCamp-once the team got going, anyway-was like heaven compared with being on a team in the outside world. Re-creating this environment was repeatable early on. And now the process is streamlined, expressed as patterns and protocols, doesn't require us to participate directly, and works every time. The most effective initial way to spread the word about how to create your own development team heaven, as it were, to bring the joy and get the level of results achieved we've seen time after time, was to write a book about how we and the teams in BootCamp made it possible. And repeatable.

We have this vision: No matter where you work in the world or what kind of product you're creating, someday the environment you are in will be at least as efficient, exhilarating, supportive, and effective as we've seen it time after time in the BootCamps we've conducted. Writing a book that encodes ideas and practices that have proven themselves many times over, ideas that are mature enough to transmit broadly, is the necessary first step toward fulfilling that vision. That's this book. continue

Interview with Software Team Management Experts Jim and Michele McCarthy

Informit.com

Question: How is this book different from other books on managing software teams?

Primarily because of how it came to be. In 1996, after years of management, development, marketing, and program manager gigs at Microsoft and elsewhere, we decided to figure out once and for all the key dynamics of teamwork. We created a teamwork laboratory called Software Development BootCamp. BootCamp is a laboratory in that every BootCamp is experimental. It's a team formation and product development simulation that lasts a week. First, we give every team an assignment, the same one we've given every team: Design, implement, and deliver a course that teaches you everything you need to know to ship great products on time, every time. We tell them up front (in a manual) everything we know so far about how to form a great team and ship a product in a week (the manual is revised pretty much every BootCamp). And we require that they ship a great product five days later. Has to be great. Has to be on time. In those five days, they use what all the other teams have learned, what we have learned, and whatever they discover on their own, to achieve their goals. Those practices that work are continuously refined and rereleased the next time (In our willingness to accept new practices that are successful and our willingness to throw out what isn't, we have been called "ruthlessly empirical.") Hundreds of some of the brightest developers in the world experimented with and worked on these practices over the years. The complete set of them, which is called The Core, Version 1.0, is the software in Software for Your Head.

As BootCamp developed, we could see that being on a team in BootCamp-once the team got going, anyway-was like heaven compared with being on a team in the outside world. Re-creating this environment was repeatable early on. And now the process is streamlined, expressed as patterns and protocols, doesn't require us to participate directly, and works every time. The most effective initial way to spread the word about how to create your own development team heaven, as it were, to bring the joy and get the level of results achieved we've seen time after time, was to write a book about how we and the teams in BootCamp made it possible. And repeatable.

We have this vision: No matter where you work in the world or what kind of product you're creating, someday the environment you are in will be at least as efficient, exhilarating, supportive, and effective as we've seen it time after time in the BootCamps we've conducted. Writing a book that encodes ideas and practices that have proven themselves many times over, ideas that are mature enough to transmit broadly, is the necessary first step toward fulfilling that vision. That's this book. continue