Peopleware: Team Spaghetti Dinner

Picture yourself a technical worker who’s just been assigned to a new project. You know the manager and most of the other project personnel by name, but that’s about it. Your first day on the new project is next Monday. On Wednesday before that Monday, you get a call from your boss-to-be. She’s having a get-together, she says, for people on the new project. Is there any chance you could come by her place on Thursday evening for dinner with the rest of the team? You’re free and want to meet the new group, so you accept.

When you arrive, the whole group is sitting around the living room drinking beer and telling war stories. You join in and tell a few of your own. The client liaison, who has also been invited, does a bit about his department head. Everybody has another beer. You begin to wonder about food. There is no smell of anything cooking and no sign of anyone working in the kitchen. Finally, your boss-to-be admits that she hasn’t had time to make dinner, and suggests that the whole crew walk over to a nearby supermarket and assemble the makings of a meal. “I guess we must be capable of putting a spaghetti dinner together.”

Off you go. In the supermarket, you amble as a group through the aisles. Nobody takes charge. Your boss seems to have anything on her mind but dinner. She chats and laughs and offers up a story about the IRS. In spite of a general lack of direction, some things do get thrown into the cart. One fellow has already gotten the salad pretty well taken care of. There is some talk of making a clam sauce, and when nobody’s opposed, two of your new mates begin to talk out the details. You decide to make your patented garlic bread. Someone else picks out a bottle of Chianti. Finally, there is a consensus that enough stuff is in the cart for dinner.

Back at the ranch, you all set down your bags of groceries and the boss grabs another beer and tells about a new software tool. Little by little, the party gravitates toward the kitchen where some preparations are beginning. Your boss gives no direction, but she pitches in to chop onions when someone suggests that’s what’s needed. You start the garlic and olive oil simmering in a pan. There is a sauce bubbling and some spaghetti boiling. Gradually, a dinner comes together. You all eat till you’re full and then share in the cleanup chores.⊕ (DeMarco and Lister 2013, chap. 26)