Rapid Development (McConnell) is one of those books that should be on every programmer’s bookshelf. I regularly pull it from its place on my shelf, sitting somewhere between Code Complete (McConnell) and Peopleware (DeMarco & Lister).
The QA guy on our team is leaving and we may need to fill his spot with a permanent employee, eventually. The first place I went for advice about selecting new team members was my notes on Rapid Development, which led me the following relevant points. Steve McConnell quotes them from Barry Boehm’s book, Software Engineering Economics:
- Top talent – Use better and fewer people.
- Job matching – Fit the tasks to the skills and motivation of the people available.
- Career progression – Help people to self-actualize rather than forcing them to work where they have the most experience or where they are most needed.
- Team balance – Select people who will complement and harmonize with each other.
- Misfit elimination – Eliminate and replace problem team members as quickly as possible.
While the above is not detailed, I think it is self-explanatory, and good advice. Maybe, in the future, I will try to break them down and go into more detail on how I think these can be applied practically.