Real Dream Teams : Seven Practices Used
by World-Class Team Leaders to Achieve Extraordinary Results
by Bob Fisher, Bo Thomas, Robert Fisher
Hardcover - 185 pages (February 1996)
CRC Press - St. Lucie Press
ISBN: 1574440063
Want the best out of your test team or software project team?
In today's competitive environment, teams and organisations have to go further than in the past to be successful. In their book, 'Real Dream Teams', authors Bob Fisher, and Bo Thomas have identified seven key practices in operation in highly successful teams.
Practice
1: Owning the Mission
Practice 2: Mutual Support, Respect, and Encouragement
Practice 3: Role Clarification and Negotiation
Practice 4: Win-Win Cooperation
Practice 5: Building Technical, Personal, and Teaming Competencies
Practice 6: Empowering Communication
Practice 7: Winning Attitude
The authors present details and anecdotes to underline each of the key practices. They describe twelve powerful team leaders from various walks of life to show that good team principles are generic and not specific to a particular business type or endeavour.
The life domains from which the team leaders are chosen include author, chairman of a major food corporation, CEO and chairman of a motor corporation, football coach, dean of a business school, aircraft display team commander, orchestra conductor, basketball coach, Nobel Prize winner, Mt. Everest team leader, and military Medal of Honour winner. No software testers are used as role models, but the authors do invite you to share any dream team experience you may have had!
I would recommend this book to (test) managers and all those who aspire to getting top performance out of team situations such as is often necessary in testing situations.
This book is about people skills or the so-called soft skills. It is my belief that mastering of these soft skills enables the proper environment of trust and motivation in which the more technical skills can grow and flourish. I believe that you cannot support the passion and excellence required for the detail and volume of technical material required for testing, without growing excellence in these team skills. Software development and testing in its own right, is too big and multi-faceted for any individual to master single-handedly.
To quote Ray
O' Croc, the founder of MacDonalds, "all of us are better than any
one of us."
If you believe I am right, get this book for your team.
Wayne Mallinson