The Psychology of Software Teams: Building Resilient, Human-Centered Engineering Cultures
I argue that sustainable software development requires moving beyond the 'Brains-in-Jars' myth to embrace behavioral science. By applying rigorous empirical evidence, we can foster psychological safety and collaboration, transforming toxic work environments into thriving ecosystems where developers build incredible software without burnout.
Psychological safety, learning, and collaboration aren't perks, they are infrastructure. Ignore them and your systems will fail, slowly or catastrophically.
- Aurornis
I feel like there could be a lot of value in understanding the psychology of teams and using it to build an environment where they can thrive.
However, every person I've worked with who was into these workplace-psychology books started thinking of themselves as expert diagnosticians of other people's psychology. Every personality or problem got mapped back to a scenario from a book they read, even when it wasn't a good fit. They started believing they understood other people better than those people understood themselves.
You couldn't talk to them about problems unless you could figure out which book(s) they were using, read them yourself, and then played a game where you explained things to them in a way that would get them to match the stereotyped situations in their books.
So instead of saying that the requirements are changing too haphazardly and too often (which would get you labelled as being too rigid or a complainer or something) you would have to explain that the requirements changing process is harmful to the team's psychological safety or other buzzwords. They've read enough books saying that a manager's job is to provide psychological safety, they see themselves as the hero manager, and therefore they need to fix this problem to provide psychological safety for the team.
I loathed it all so very much. It's refreshing to go back to managers who just talk to other people like people. I'm sure my good managers also read some of these books, but they didn't put any on […]
- neilk
I haven’t read this book, but I noticed the author makes much of their empirical research available with a CC license.
https://catharsisinsight.com/ , scroll way down to “Developers deserve science.”
I found this one interesting. The authors note that often, developers avoid code reviews, and engage in a lot of unproductive behavior around them. They claim that a pretty simple one-session cognitive-behavioral intervention can dramatically change that.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9
Anyway, the longer I work in this field the more I see psychology as the dominant factor in team productivity. Assuming the job is doable, and you’ve hired good people, and the team has adequate control over their own work, that’s what’s left. You might argue that tool use or team practices are more important, but what stops you from adopting them or using them correctly? What stops you from learning from your mistakes? Usually something about your group psychology.
- smiggels10
I really do not recommend to buy the ebook in this web shop.
Its the worst UX I have ever seen in an online shop.
Normally you would pay and then receive a link to download.
Here it goes like this:
- you receive an email: Please create an account on our website, you will benefit a lot from it
- then another email: If you want to get the book you just payed for, you must register first and then enter this code: #20 digit cryptic string#
- you create an account, eventually successfully bypass the dark pattern to seduce you to accept spam mails from them ("click here if you do not want to receive spam mails from us").
- You log in an see: "No books in your account", where can I enter the 20 digit cryptic code?
- Another look at the mails, oh, they said, "If you want to receive your book, you have to create an account on ANOTHER website
- You create another acccount
- Log in, you see a message: "Please click on the link in your confirmation mail"
- no confirmation mail received
- Go back, click on "send confirmation mail again"
- Some time later, confirmation mail arrives. But just a mail with header and footer but no content, no link to click
- Try again, same result
- Obviously something went wrong, can i report the bug somewhere? Of course not!
I am still waiting for my book.
- SpaceL10n
A lot of smaller organizations really struggle to collaborate with their software teams. Collaboration is hard, in general, but especially so if the organization isn't fluent and competent in software product development. Before you go diving into the psychology of your sad and despondent software team, look around them. Are the people working with them capable of supporting and engaging with these engineers?
- pluc
The author's site is https://www.drcathicks.com/ and this is the publisher.