No More Teams

No More Teams! Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration by Michael Schrage, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1995, ISBN 0-385-47603-5

• Recommended by MichaelMcCormick? on the PairProgramming list.

• Reviewed by EdYourdon at http://www.yourdon.com/articles/9608Schrage.html

A book about getting beyond the "team" buzzword, and beyond organizational "structure", to organizational "process," and in particular, how to encourage people to collaborate creatively. (I'm mining too many buzzwords from the reviews; sorry!)

From the reviews, it seems Schrage discovered that a lot of creative small "teams" were creative partnerships of two people. Sound like PairProgramming to anyone else?

There's also a discussion of collaborative technology. (I wonder what he'd think of Wiki?-)

See http://webcom.com/quantera/schrage.html

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This is an excellent book. Schrage says one of the secrets of creativity is collaboration; few people can be creative on their own. Creativity comes when two or more people with different viewpoints (but who can work with each other) have a shared workspace, be it modeling clay, a whiteboard, or a spreadsheet. They use this workspace to communicate. The software that best supports collaboration is that which best provides a shared workspace. Schrage would like Wiki very much. He would also like XP, because not only does PairProgramming go along with his ideas, but he would also like the idea of focusing on the code and using the code to communicate. -- RalphJohnson

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CategoryBook