Debugging Teams: Better Productivity through Collaboration

by Brian W. Fitzpatrick

People are inherently imperfect.

nobody likes to be criticized, especially for things that aren’t finished.

Hiding Is Considered Harmful

Be Open

“Fail early, fail fast, fail often”

Bus factor (noun): the number of people that need to get hit by a bus before your project is completely doomed.

Working with other people directly increases the collective wisdom behind the effort.

People working in caves awake to discover that while their original vision may be complete, the world has changed and made the product irrelevant.

working alone is inherently riskier than working with others

Almost every social conflict can ultimately be traced back to a lack of humility, respect, or trust.

try to build a sense of team accomplishment and group pride.

Criticism is almost never personal in a professional software engineering environment

You are not what you make.

patience and willingness to improvise new working styles not only saved the project, but also saved the friendship.

Admitting you’ve made a mistake or you’re simply out of your league is a way to increase your status over the long run.

sometimes it’s dangerous to get too much feedback too early in the process,

if you don’t put effort into building and maintaining your culture, your team will eventually be overtaken by strong personalities that cultivate their culture in your team.

Let’s start with the most dreaded meeting of all: the standing meeting. This meeting usually takes place every week, and should absolutely be kept to basic announcements and introductions — going around the room for a status update from every attendee (whether they have something important to add or not) is a recipe for wasted time, rolling eyes, and a burning desire to punch yourself in the throat just to make it end.

it’s practically impossible to come up with new designs and make decisions with more than five people in a room unless there’s only one person in the room making the decisions.

Traditional managers worry about how to get things done, while leaders worry about what things get done…(and trust their team to figure out how to do it).

while you may be the one driving the team to consensus and helping to set the direction, the nuts and bolts of how to accomplish your goals are best decided by the people who are putting the product together.

The farther you move up the chain, the faster you can set the gears below you spinning, whether you intend to or not.