The Psychology of Software Teams

To build the future, we need new ways of supporting software teams. This book will give you a secret weapon: the psychology that creates resilience for developers, sustainable practices for software teams, and innovation for organizations. You'll learn from rigorous empirical evidence gathered from top engineering organizations and thousands of developers around the world, revealing powerful principles software teams can use to guard against failure and drive cultures of collaboration and problem-solving. Making incredible software doesn't have to be a death march-this book presents a humane alternative for software teams looking to use the transformative power of behavioral science to understand what drives technology businesses forward. The Psychology of Software Teams provides a model for developers and leaders who want to bring the human back to tech and take a science-based approach to unlocking the "black box" of software engineering. This book is for the developers and builders of the future. Bringing science and heart together, The Psychology of Software Teams will teach you how to untangle your thinking from pervasive myths about software work and harness the superpowers of psychology to create more joyful, innovative, and thriving environments for software.

Cat Hicks is a psychological scientist who creates open science to drive change for people doing technical work. She holds a PhD in Quantitative Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego and is the founder and principal scientist of Catharsis, a scientific consultancy that helps organizations transform with human-centered evidence strategies. drcathicks.com

1. The Brains and Hearts That Build the World 2. Breaking Up with Brains-in-Jars 3. More Bands and Fewer Rockstars 4. The Performance Paradox 5. Conflict or Coalitions? 6. Becoming an Organization That Wants to Understand Itself 7. Fighting Dirty for Good Culture