What allows some teams to deliver results that far exceed expectations? How do these groups differ from most others? What can group members and leaders do to enable these extraordinary experiences? Geoff Bellman, along with his partner Kathleen Ryan, spent four years diving deeply into self-declared fantastic teams. They interviewed people from sixty great teams, added their own experience as managers and consultants, and came to ground-breaking conclusions documented in their book, Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results. Geoff presents their discoveries about what makes for exceptional performance. Sharing the eight indicators that his study shows are key, Geoff offers up the primary needs people fulfill by interacting in groups and suggests ways of meeting those needs within work teams.

It's surprising how little of the research around incentives has made it into regular management practice. Widespread belief is that the debate is first about carrots vs. sticks and then about the kinds of carrots or sticks. Cognitive scientists, however, suggest that carrots result only in temporary compliance. Rewards, like punishment, are ineffective in producing lasting change. Numerous studies show that offering incentives is not only less effective than other strategies but often proves worse than doing nothing at all. Organizations seem to focus on the effects of variations in incentives and not on whether performance-based pay has a real effect on performance levels. Managers often use incentives instead of giving workers what they need to do a good job: treating workers well, providing useful feedback, offering social support, and allowing room for self-determination.

Are you in this situation? You share responsibility with others to get things done, and, although you are not in charge of them and they are not in charge of you, your individual performance, credibility, and perhaps even your paycheck depend on what you accomplish with them. Knowing how to get things done with others over whom you have no direct authority may be your greatest leverage for career success-and your success in developing high-value software. Christopher Avery shares his communication framework for building and leading cohesive, high-performance teams. You don't need to be a smooth-talker or an extrovert to master this approach. The fundamental challenge is helping team members understand the differences between responsibility and accountability, and mastering the dynamics of everyone's assuming shared responsibility for success.

What clues from a project's history and present status give us the best insight into its future? Realistically, can much be done to "fix" a project if the current signs aren't promising? Or are most projects' fate preordained? Payson Hall has participated in and reviewed hundreds of projects during his thirty-year career in software development. Without claiming mystical powers, Payson shares patterns of failing projects he's observed on large and small software projects in both the public and private sectors. Then, he explores key leverage points for taking corrective actions to get things back on track quickly. You'll discover ways to identify early "problem seeds" that can grow into larger issues over time. Take back a diagnostic framework-a systematic investigatory process-to help identify root causes of problems.