View of The Product Team As A Rock Band
This thought came to my mind as I was reading a review of Tom Petty's biography on the cover by Stephen Dubner: "This amazing book is a Tom Petty biography (and it's great on that account) but it's far more than that. It's an X-ray of the most fragile, most volatile, and most sublime social unit ever invented: the rock-and-roll band. The alliances, the distortions, the deep bruises and the absurd elations that can never be explained to an outsider. Sure, Petty is a book about a rock band but it's really a book about being human - how we meet and collaborate, break up and make up, learn to trust (or not) and, once in a lucky while, sing as loud as we can. It's a masterpiece.” If the rock-and-roll band is "the most fragile, most volatile, and most sublime social unit every invented" the software development product team is somewhere in the top 10 of that category. I've never been part of a rock band, but I have worked with many software