Yes, of course we need to improve the code around us, but it can be done without criticism, in the sense of disparaging the code and the author. As any skilled teacher knows, rewarding and praising good code and giving incentives works well in any Dev team. Criticising code causes havoc, and damages relations. Even when the author has long gone, it isn't an effective way of making progress. It is much better to demonstrate how code can be improved without criticizing code. I know this can be hard to do because intuition often tells you that criticism works, but that's probably because you experienced poor teaching at school and college or Uni.

I once wrote an article about positive approaches of changing people's behavior at work, with the catch, or twist, being that I wrote it about the team members turning their manager into a better and happier leader of the team by simple positive techniques.

On Training Your IT Manager[/url]