Plan - Building The Team
Objective
The jelled team is a cohesive, interdependent group of individuals whose production of the team is greater than the sum of its parts. Following some basic principles sets up the optimum environment for a team to jell.
Principles
This is a pretty self-explanatory item during the planning process, but there are some general guidelines we like to follow when thinking about building an effective team. They are:
- Team members need to be excited about the product concept itself.
- Select team members who can bring dedicated focus. This means try not to allocate any single person to multiple projects. This is less efficient and results in decreased focused for the team member.
- Someone from each craft should be present during the broader planning meetings. An engineer, a designer, a product manager, and a stakeholder. This ensures all constraints are properly taken into consideration.
- "Provide strategic but not tactical direction." -Peopleware
- "Autonomy only exists when managers give their employees room to make mistakes." -Peopleware
- "We cannot increase productivity in knowledge work by turning up the pressure. Any short-term gains in productivity have to be weighed against future loss of employees." -Peopleware
- "Managers who support teams aren't doing the work of the team--they're focused on healthy relationships" -Peopleware
Learning Resources
