The authors keep saying a sort of mantra during the book: HRT, an acronym that stands for Humility, Respect and Trust. Apply this mantra and you will soon become an excellent team player, whatever your job is.

As a software developer and a team member, I know how difficult is dealing with people in respect of writing code sitting comfortably at my desk, so I am usually very skeptical of technical books that promise to teach you how to deal with this “human stuff” like it was a programming language. I had the pleasure to meet Brian Fitzpatrick at a conference and I was very impressed by his brilliant personality and his fascinating personal story and this somehow convinced me on reading this book. And I was not disappointed because since the first pages you have the strong feeling you’re reading something written by developers, so you mostly and easily get the point of the authors.

The book is full of good advices, best practices and even a list of antipatterns you better avoid to apply to your team. Some of the advices derives from common sense and you or your team likely apply them already, nevertheless it was very useful realizing how important some behaviors, habits or attitudes me and my team already have but wrongly take for granted, or worst, miss to improve.

I’ll do my best to have my colleagues read this book.