Effective Teams

Most conferences will try to tell you that the secret to good software development lies with a process, or a technology, or an architecture. Here's a dirty little secret. You can build working software with an outdated two tier archtiecture, a waterfall process and COBOL. How? By building a great team. These techniques were used to build one of the most unique and complex up and coming Ruby on Rails sites.

By far, the biggest factor in the success or failure of a software project is the quality of your team. Build a great team first, and great software will follow. In this session, we'll explore ways to build effective teams for modern software development. Whether you're a project manager or a technical lead, you need to know how to build the most effective team possible. In this session, we'll look at all aspects of team building, including

• What team sizes are optimal for software projects?
• What tools can help your team communicate?
• How does development process come into play?
• How do you build better software faster?

About Bruce Tate

Bruce Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker, and father of two from Austin, Texas. Currently at RapidRed, his focus is on rapid development and Ruby applications. Bruce was the chief technology officer behind the sites ChangingThePresent.org and ClassWish. His current project is DigtheDirt, a social gardening site. The international speaker has coauthored more than a dozen books including Rails Up and Running, Deploying Rails Applications, Beyond Java, and From Java to Ruby. His firm seeks to improve total application quality through the use of small teams, expressive programming language and agile development practices.

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