[Book] Debugging the Development Process

Debugging the Development Process by Steve Maguire (author of Writing Solid Code) is an excellent book that deals with "Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams" (from the back cover).

If Writing Solid Code is for programmers, then this one is for Managers, Leads, or yet to become Managers/Leads.

The book focuses on how to keep your team focused, motivated, set the right goals and not let unnecessary work/meetings, bad schedules stop them from doing their daily chores and much more.

Key Points:

• Avoid anything that doesn't improve the product.
• Always set detailed goals, priorities and quality bars for each project.
• Fix bugs then and there, don't wait for time that will never come.
• Use existing systems to assist you in the process.
• Use negative feedback to achieve desirable results.
• Always try to fix the root cause of the problem.
• Determine the exact requirement before plunging into action.
• Never commit, if you know you can't meet the dates.
• Don't do something just to please everybody. You will jeopardize the product.
• There ain't any such thing as free product or feature.
• Don't implement a feature just for the heck of it.
• Make sure it's worth the writer's time before asking for a report.
• Use postmortem reports to improve your development process.
• Make sure you have a clear agenda before calling for a meeting, and make sure the agenda/action items gets done.
• Keep aggressive but attainable schedules.
• Never allow an arbitary dealine jeopardize the product.
• Break long-term projects into shorter, well-defined subprojects.
• Kick your best programmers out of the group if they aren't growing/learning to a different group.
• Provide on-the-spot feedback, don't wait for the annual performance review.
• Programmers need to understand that writing bug-free code ain't easy, so they should do everything under their power to detect and prevent bugs.