Software Engineering for Students A Programming Approach

28.5 The chief programmer team 351
As we shall see, some techniques exploit this principle of the division of labor.
How are teams usually organized? There are two common methods of organizing
teams involved in software development – functional teams and project teams.
28.3 ● The functional team
In the functional team organization, all the members of the team carry out the same
type of work, so that there is a team of programmers, a team of analysts, a team of
testers, and so on. At any one time, the members of a team are working on different
projects; the work of a single project is carried out by people from different teams.
A major problem of functional teams is that the people who are working on a single
project are not a cohesive team. They may even be physically separated in different
offices. Close and easy communication is inhibited.
Another problem of the functional team is that the person responsible for a project
is not the manager or leader of the people working on his or her project. Thus he or
she may not have as much control over them as they would like.
28.4 ● The project team
In a project team, everyone in the team is engaged on developing the same system.
The team therefore usually consists of people who carry out all the work of the
development – requirements analysis, programming, testing and so on. Initially, a
team of this kind consists of only a single person. As requirements engineering gets
under way, the team grows to two or three people. When the project is fully under
way, during coding and testing, it expands to its maximum. Towards the end of the
project, members leave the team until finally it is disbanded. The project manager is
usually a member of the team, and in control of the team.
The drawback of a project team is that its membership waxes and wanes as the
demands of the project change. Initially only one or two people may carry out analysis
and architectural design. During implementation the numbers grow to full strength.
Then, towards the end, when the system is being put into operation, the numbers
diminish.
28.5 ● The chief programmer team
The chief programmer team is a project-based organization in which specialization is
implemented in an extreme form. The principles behind the chief programmer team
organization are:
■ to divide the work amongst skilled specialists.
■ to structure the team in a well-defined way so that each individual’s role is clear and
communication is minimized.