How do you maximize team productivity? Decades of research have found at least a ten-fold—“10x”—difference in productivity and quality between the best teams and the worst. The studies have collectively involved hundreds of professional programmers across a spectrum of programming activities. Specific differences range from about 5:1 to about 25:1, and in my judgment, that collectively supports the 10x claim. Moreover, the research finding is consistent with my experience, in which I have personally observed 10x differences (or more) between different programmers.
Fully updated from beginning to end, our 10x Software Development, Second Edition online course describes the Eight Key Principles of 10x software development—how the most effective teams approach their work. The principles are:
- Avoid minus-x software development
- Set direction
- Attack uncertainty
- Tailor the solution to the problem
- Seek ground truth
- Make decisions with data
- Minimize unintentional rework
- Grow capability
You’ll gain a deep understanding of these principles in this course, and you’ll learn specific tactics for turning your team into a 10x team.
New for the second edition are multiple activities to deepen your learning experience, including case studies, exercises, and quizzes; a reassessment and refreshing of every lesson in the course via full in-studio production (no “voice over PowerPoint”); and the addition of tactic-specific resources to help you take your learning beyond our course. There’s literally nothing about this course that we haven’t improved!
Because 10x software development requires all roles to be strong, this course is appropriate for Managers, Technical Leads, Quality Leads, Test Leads, Developers, Testers, and other software project stakeholders. In other words, this is a good course for software development teams as well as individual practitioners.
After you complete this course, you will be able to:
- Apply tactics to address the classic mistakes your team is making
- Identify the development fundamentals you need to grow
- Make decisions that will stick
After your team completes this course, it will be able to:
- Confirm that you are all aligned on the project’s objectives
- Match your development lifecycle to your work rather than the other way around
- Apply risk management appropriately
- Plan the right kind of early defect detection
- Review and enhance your feedback loops
If you’re not already a member of Construx OnDemand, start a free trial today and take your first steps toward 10x excellence!
For a description of the body of research proving the existence of the 10x phenomenon, see my earlier blog post“Origins of 10X – How Valid is the Underlying Research?”