What pictures do we have in our minds when we think about effective software development? Code quality, continuous integration, pair programming or what have you. While I’m a big fan of all of them I would challenge the concept that this is the only, or the most important, area which developers should focus on.
Building software is a collective effort of people working in different roles and this should always be a starting point to a discussion about effectiveness. The missing piece may be software craftsmanship but it may also be handful of dull chores that few would fancy doing. How can we tell? What should we use as guidance? And, at the end of the day, how to build software effectively?
13. Zeigarnik Effect
Tendency to experience
intrusive thought about an
objective left incomplete
Source: S. Greist-Bousquet, N. Shiffman: The effect of task interruption and closure on perceived duration
14. Cost of task switching
is rooted in interference
from thoughts about the task
you are not doing
Eyal Ophir
46. in·tel·li·gence noun in-ˈte-lə-jən(t)s
(1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with
new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled
use of reason
(2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate
one's environment or to think abstractly as measured
by objective criteria (as tests)
Souce: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence
52. Collective intelligence was
much more predictive in terms of
succeeding in complex tasks than average
individual intelligence or maximal
individual intelligence
Anita Woolley
56. Indicators of collective
intelligence
Social perceptiveness
Communication quality
Moderate cognitive style diversity
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups
57. Cognitive styles
Object viualizers (visual arts)
Spatial visualizers (engineering)
Verbalizers (humanities)
Source: O. Blazhenkova, M. Kozhevnikov: The New Object-Spatial-Verbal Cognitive Style Model
59. The more women the
better collective
intelligence*
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups
60. Indicators of collective
intelligence
Social perceptiveness
Communication quality
Moderate cognitive style diversity
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups
63. Bigger teams have
better collective
intelligence*
Source: Anita Woolley: Collective Intelligence in Human Groups
64. There’s no difference in
productivity or quality
between teams
of 5-9 and
10-12 people
Source: Larry Maccherone: Quantifying the impact of Lean, Kanban, and Agile practices