Here's what I did to make me better at shipping software (which is slightly different than the question asked.) I read moneyball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Here's what I did to make me better at shipping software (which is slightly different than the question asked.) I read moneyball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball) - a book about using sabremetrics to create a winning baseball team and realized that everything I knew about being a great programmer and creating a great team was wrong. The key takeaway I took from the book is that the things we think make a great baseball player (such as RBIs and HR) aren't what help win a game. There are better stats, such as on-base percentage. In the world of software, I correlate between winning a baseball game with shipping software. And I suspect that what we traditionally recognize as strong individual performance isn't really what leads to shipping great software (same as having someone hit a lot of HRs on your team doesn't mean you'll win a lot of games.) Right now, I suspect that (so-callled) soft skills around communication and time management are the fundamentals stats that are more important. So I've focused heavily on things like personal and team time management, and writing skills.