Software development is a team sport

It is very common to imagine a software engineer as a solitary genius who likes to work alone, reclusive, and does not need anyone else to solve any problem that may arise.

It is true that for some time, computing has attracted people with more introspective personalities. But what has been happening is that the teams that have achieved the greatest long-term success are those that see software development as a team sport.

What do I mean by “team sport”? The software produced by a team should reflect the team, or the company, as a whole. Whether in style, conventions, or architectural decisions. Having pieces of code reflecting individual styles and practices are signs that the team is not working collectively and collaboratively.

And why is it important for the team to work collectively and collaboratively? Well, there are several reasons:

1. Ease of understanding: If each piece of code carries individual practices and patterns, it is very difficult for someone who has never seen a particular piece of code to understand what is going on there.
2. Single point of view: If only one person participated in the construction of a code, the chance that this code has a problem or does not consider some specific case and this has gone unnoticed is high, as the only person who saw and knows this code is the person who wrote it.
3. Single point of failure: The person who works alone in development is a single point of failure for the team, as if he or she leaves the company, you have lost the only person who knew about that problem or code.
4. Team learning: When development is done collectively, the team exchanges experiences and learning. Not only do numerous opportunities arise for one developer to teach another about technologies and practices, but the team also acquires knowledge of different business problems and becomes better prepared to work on different fronts.

That is, a team that sees code development as a collaborative activity has much more exchange, democratizes knowledge, and is better prepared to deal with adversities.

And what strategies can a team adopt to encourage collaborative and teamwork development?

1. Code Review: Traditionally, Code Review is seen as a tool to improve code quality by reducing bugs and failures that reviewers find. Of course, this is part of the process, but one of the great benefits of Code Review is another. By reviewing, analyzing, and understanding each other’s code, a programmer understands how he or she thinks, discusses things he or she doesn’t understand, proposes different ways to approach a problem. That is, it is a very powerful learning tool.
2. Code Style Guide: Having a code style guide that the team must follow ensures that the adopted standards are the same, making life easier for everyone. Remember that the important thing here is not to follow the style that one person or another likes the most. Individual preferences do not matter to the team. What is important is that everyone follows the same standard.
3. Pair Programming: It is a similar way to Code Review to discuss ideas, share and learn together. It has the advantage of happening during code writing and allows for a deeper and more dynamic discussion of challenges. On the other hand, the results of this discussion and the path they took to get there are restricted to the two programmers who participated in the development. The ideal is to mix both approaches.

The benefits of these practices are usually incremental and cumulative. In other words, at first, the team will feel that they have more work to deliver the same amount of code, and the benefits seem small and not worth the additional effort. However, over time, the team gains ownership of the code, everyone’s knowledge about the codebase increases, and with practice, the difficulty of following the processes decreases.

Creating this culture of collective ownership of the code is not easy, but undoubtedly brings many benefits to the team. Take the first step and try one of these practices!