mplin

Brooks talks about the surgical team proposal by Harlan Mills as a way in
which tasks can be divided within in a programming team. Basically there are
the surgeons who are responsible for defining the program, coding it,
testing it, and writing the documentation. Then there's the support staff of
the surgeon who handle tasks which include administrative work, editing,
maintenance, creating test cases, and maintaining technical records. This
structure is in opposition to what Brooks calls the "conventional team" in
which partners divide the work, and each is responsible for the design and
implementation of part of the work. 

In my CS 32 project team, we worked as a conventional team with a "group
leader" who basically was in charge of getting us together and making sure
we stayed on schedule.  We did not have a lead surgeon. Each one of us was a
surgeon, which would make us all equals and thus a conventional team. I
found this to work out great. We all participated in the design of the
project and understood exactly how each part of the program functioned in
relation to the program as a whole. We didn't know the details of the code
for every aspect of the program, but we were able to understand how
everything worked together, and could provide suggestions to each other when
one of came across a problem.

In our small group, where we coded for about 1 month, I found the
conventional team to work out great. I don't think the surgical structure
would have worked for us given our short amount of time because we would
have had to rely on 1 or 2 people to code up most of the project. This would
not have worked out. We all had substantial parts to code. However, if our
group was much larger, such as 30 or even several hundred people, I don't
think the conventional team would work out that well. There would be too
many people to coordinate and it would be logistically hard to have everyone
have an equal part of the program and design a single portion. It would make
more sense to me to have the surgical team, comprised of smaller surgical
teams. The surgeons would be responsible for one portion of the program,
with their support staff. The logistical coordination would be more
efficient if there were several group leaders who could report back to their
teams. Each person within the team would have a specialized job, and not
necessarily understand the complications within an entire segment of the
program, but would know enough to fulfill the task. The surgeon(s), or group
leader, would be responsible for the team and could work in conjunction with
the other surgeons to make sure the entire program is on track and
implemented properly.

But I find it difficult to determine exactly when the conventional structure
would be better vs the surgical team structure. I have limited experience
working in teams, and only then it's in a short time period with a small
group, using only the conventional model. For this project, I'm leaning
towards the conventional model again, probably since I've used it before and
am familiar with it. Given that we're only coding for 3 weeks, I can't
imagine how we could use a surgical team because we would have at least 6
parts to work on, with each part of equal importance. Unless in a group of
10, we had about 6 surgeons and 4 supporting members, but then this would
basically be a conventional team. Maybe a mixture of the two would work out
best in our situation (or any situation). We will probably find out soon
enough, or at least learn our lesson by the end of the semester.