Handbook of Team Design : A Practitioner's Guide to Team Systems Development

Rapid Application Development and other team design methods have become the systems designer's choice for developing Internet, Web, and intranet applications. This authoritative handbook covers all the major methods and technologies and is filled with real-world advice based on the author's years of requirements. Checklists and tables help design teams map out their goals and stay on track in meeting them. In this demanding era of usability, groupware, and globalization, this is the first resource that truly takes group design practice out of the lab and brings it where it is needed - to the development site.

Written by a highly respected expert whose career is centered on the creation of smooth-running development teams, this unique book is the first to offer working professionals a field-tested and field-verified approach. Combining the best tools, techniques, and strategies from Joint Application Development (JAD), participatory design, distributed development, and all major team approaches, this book jumps across disciplines to bring you the best methods from all specialties that contribute to system design.

But this book does more than draw on all the most successful approaches to team design, as applied in a broad range of real-world situations. The Handbook of Team Design also presents a new system of frameworks for applying these methods. It provides you with guidelines for four separate arenas. You'll get precise procedures, checklists, charts, and workable tools for development in business and information systems, software products, user participation, and technical systems.

The Hands-On Guide To Successful Group Software Projects.

The Challenge: Pull off a successful team-effort software analysis, design, or development project.

How To Meet It: Use the Handbook of Team Design, the first comprehensive, systematic presentation of the best methods, strategies, techniques, and tools for team projects in the real world.

If you've got responsibility for a software project that involves clients, users, analysts, and developers-or two or more members of any group-you need the Handbook of Team Design.

This book will help you:

• Convince clients you have the right approach for their software job;
• Structured a detailed, workable development plan;
• Create smooth-functioning teams from people of widely diverse backgrounds;
• Lead design groups and workshops;
• Handle projects that involve client and user input;
• Succeed with projects that have widely scattered participants;
• Provide an appropriate plan for software design and development in any arena;
• Ensure that deliverables are ready on or before their due dates!

Written for facilitators, project managers, systems analysts, usability engineers, interface designers, human factors professionals, group and team leaders, and team members, this well-organized, complete compendium of team design methods gives you the best techniques from a range of sources and a flexible approach tht allows you to choose the tools that best fit your task. You get tools from Joint Application Development (JAD), participatory design, distributed development, and all the principal team approaches, as well as frameworks for applying these tools in any circumstances.

Whether you're working on a Web project, client/server, Lotus Notes, data warehousing, business rule capture, CRC cards, object-oriented design, or any other team software effort, this book can facilitate the group process. Destined to become a classic, the Handbook of Team Design is the most practical, comprehensive, and useful guide to software team design ever published. It is a book that team and development professionals will refer to again and again.

Jones proposes a "framework" for development which he calls Team Design and which he contrasts with Joint Application Development (JAD) and other group methods. Jones defines five Formats (Business Process Design, Requirements Definition, Application Design, Team Planning, Decision Making) under which almost any development project or part thereof can be placed. He devotes separate chapters to each Format, defining for each Format the life–cycle steps within the Format, the workshop agenda activities that apply to each phase of the life–cycle, and recommended workshop methods (e.g., brainstorming, scoping diagrams, scenario analysis) that can develop the deliverables for the phase.

Team Design comprises a generic set of life–cycle Phases (Initiating, Scoping, Visualizing, Usage, Packaging, Validating) that can be mapped to each of the five Formats. For each Phase, Jones then recommends certain workshop methods that can be used regardless of the Format. This allows flexibility in analyzing all the factors facing a Project Manager and Facilitator (organization type, project type, end result, life–cycle phase) and adapting a workshop plan that will apply best. It also allows for bridging of experience with workshop methods across different Formats.

Jones also deals in depth with a wide variety of topics related to team–based development, including: (1) JAD and Participatory Design: A survey of the history of these two group–based methods, and an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses in various environments; (2) Facilitation: The scope of Facilitation; the technical competencies required of a Facilitator in a development environment; in–depth description of facilitation tools (e.g., conflict resolution, problem solving) and workshop methods (e.g., brainstorming, diagramming, Pareto charts), and their applicability; (3) Requirements: Analysis of the major problems faced by organizations in creating and managing requirements, and how Team Design can address those problems; (4) Team Dynamics: The phases of team development; team–building techniques; special issues involving workgroups comprising members with different functional backgrounds; and (5) Organizational Culture: The impact of organizational dynamics on a company‘s receptiveness to structured methods and team–based approaches to development.