Chief programmer team
Software project management concept
A chief programmer team is a programming team organized in a star around a "chief" role, granted to the software engineer who understands the system's intentions the best. Other team members get supporting roles.
The concept is similar to that of a surgical team in which a surgeon who performs the operation is supported by medical staff such as an anaesthetist and nurses. Fred Brooks describes the concept in detail in The Mythical Man-Month, as proposed by Harlan Mills in 1971.
01Team structure
The team consists of people. Various roles have been defined for team members, the following are taken from Brooks.
- Program Clerk: responsible for all project technical records.
- Toolsmith: builds and supports tools used by developers.
- Language Lawyer: has in-depth expertise in the language(s) used to develop the project.
In this arrangement the chief programmer and backup programmer actually work on the problem. The remaining team members provide "all conceivable support."
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chief programmer team”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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