The IBM Black Team (2002)

&gt; A member of the Black Team was the last person a programmer wanted to see walking towards him, and more than one programmer was reduced to tears while having his code evaluated by the Black Team.<p>I hope that &quot;reduced to tears&quot; stuff is just hyperbole. But even so, there&#x27;s an acceptance that to be effective you have to be an asshole, and it&#x27;s just not true.

Story about the Black Team : <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.penzba.co.uk&#x2F;GreybeardStories&#x2F;TheBlackTeam.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.penzba.co.uk&#x2F;GreybeardStories&#x2F;TheBlackTeam.html</a>

A great example of a group of people gelling into a team with its own culture in a way that enhances its work. I ran across this example in the book PeopleWare:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-Edition&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0321934113" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-E...</a><p>It had a lot more wisdom in it on teams, interruptions, flow, and so on. I recommend anyone that enjoyed this story to get it as it has many more with recommendations. Of course, my version was an older one so the new one might be better or worse. I&#x27;m sure it will be Good at the least. ;)

if the teams creating the software was not effective at producing fixes to the software, the black team&#x27;s efforts at catching bugs would have been for naught. So the silent heroes are actually the fixers.