[fzingle]

> Does it make sense to degrade the performance of good software teams because bad software teams exist?

Consider the classic statistic "most drivers think they are above average".

I posit that the same is true of software teams, almost every team will self-assess as above average, i.e. good. Those teams will then imagine that, being good, they build quality into the process and very little verification QA is done.

I have worked as a software consultant for 15 years now. I've worked with at least 40 separate software teams in that time. Every single team manager would pep talk with "this is the best team I've ever seen". Some of this is obviously blowing smoke to get people to work harder and feel good. But over the years I've had candid conversations with managers and realized that most of the time the genuinely think their team is really good, truly top 10-20%.

Here's the rub. Being a consultant, I'm almost always brought in by higher level management because something is going horribly wrong. The team can't deliver quickly. The software they deliver is bug ridden. They routinely deliver the wrong software (i.e. incorrect interpretation of requirements.)

Often times these problems are not only the fault of the development team, management has issues too. But in every single case, the development team is in dire straits. They have continuous integration sure, and unit tests, and nightly builds, and lots of green check marks. But the unit tests test that the test works. The stress tests have no reality based basis for expected load. The continuous integration system builds software but it can't be deployed in that form for x, y & z reasons, so production has a special build system, etc...

In 15 years I have never once encountered a team that would not benefit from a QA team doing boring, old school, black box manual testing. And the teams that most adamantly refuse to accept that reality are precisely those that think they are really top tier because they have 90+% unit test coverage, use agile and do nightly builds.

So, my question is, do you (I don't mean the specific "you" here, rather everyone should ask themselves this, all the time) think that most bad software teams know they are bad? Including the one you are part of? Would it really hurt to have some ye olde QA, just in case, you know, you are actually just average? :)

[shiroiuma]

I'm curious: in your many years of being a consultant to these bad teams, where the manager really thought they were top 20%, did you get a chance to talk to the rank-and-file team members, and did they paint a very different picture of the team health and software quality than their manager?

Also, did you run across any orgs where they basically refused to use a process like Agile, and instead just did ad-hoc coding, insisting that this was the best way since it worked just fine for them back when they were a 5-person startup?

[ethbr1]

Not parent, but in my experience as a consultant working with bad teams, the rank and file were 'doing the job.'

You usually had a few personality archetypes:

- The most technical dev on the team, always with a chip on their shoulder and serious personality issues, who had decided to settle for this job for (reasons)

- The vastly undertrained dev who was trying to keep up with the rest of the team, but would eventually be found out and tossed, usually to blame for a major issue

- The earnest and surprisingly competent meek dev, who presumably didn't have enough confidence to apply to a better job, but easily could have made it on merit, work ethic, and skill

- The over-confident dev who read a bit of SDLC practice, and could see every tree while missing the forest

The key is that, aside from the incompetent person, they had all always been working there for awhile. Consequently, there wasn't good or bad health and quality: there was just "the system" (at that company) and dealing with it.

And none of these folks ever worked at 5-person startups. ;) I think it was definitely more an issue of SDLC "unknown unknowns" they should be doing, than willful decisions not to.

[fzingle]

> I'm curious: in your many years of being a consultant to these bad teams, where the manager really thought they were top 20%, did you get a chance to talk to the rank-and-file team members, and did they paint a very different picture of the team health and software quality than their manager?

Yes, generally I join teams and work as an engineer or sometimes as a team lead, so I'm talking to all the team members.

Most start up teams are composed of junior developers, often pretty smart people. Usually 5 or fewer years of experience. Many times these are people who have already accomplished stuff they didn't think they could do. So that generally means that yes they think pretty highly of themselves. To a degree it is quite justifiable, they tend to be very accomplished but in a narrow domain. Unfortunately they don't realize that their technical accomplishments in a specific field does not mean that they are experts everywhere. Their managers understand that these are smart people and assume again that this is therefore a good team.

Non start ups that I join are usually just plain dysfunctional.

> Also, did you run across any orgs where they basically refused to use a process like Agile, and instead just did ad-hoc coding, insisting that this was the best way since it worked just fine for them back when they were a 5-person startup?

Usually more the opposite. In my experience I come across teams that are sure they must not need any help because they follow all the rules in Scrum and have great code coverage metrics.

It is really common to see this kind of thing. I call it "the proxy endpoint fallacy". It can crop up anywhere that there is something that can be measured. In that example, it would be confusing adherence to Scrum with having a working SDLC or perhaps confusing code coverage metrics with the objective of having bug-free releases.

This isn't a software only fallacy. In politics, GDP is often confused with societal well-being. Always be wary of your metrics and change them as required to keep you tracking your actual goals.

[coderenegade]

Depending on the shape of the distribution, most drivers could be above average. Average doesn't imply 50th percentile, that's what the median is for. A minority of tremendously poor drivers could certainly mean that most drivers are in fact better than average, in the same way that my friends on average have more friends than I do.