What makes a good development team?
Yes, it is a good question. It is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last couple months. I’ve been a part of many different software teams over the years and while each team has their own strengths and weaknesses there hasn’t been one team that excelled in every area. That is to be an expected outcome of building a team from individuals that have foibles and personalities (and as you know programmers definitely have foibles and personalities).
However, that should not be an excuse to keep a team as it is and accept their current behaviour and performance as a given. You need to continually grow and learn and stretch the team. If you
remain static then you stagnant and can no longer react to the business market and are in danger of becoming an irritant to the powers that be.
When I first started thinking about this, the elements that first came to mind were concrete elements of software development that must be present just to perform the core task of producing software. They are things like testing and source control and written documents. This quickly progressed to some of the intangible skills that will transform a group of smart individuals into a high performing team of skilled and enthusiastic developers that will be a major asset to the success of a business.
Next post… Elements of a good team
July 29, 2008 at 5:30 am
I agree with most of your comments above about a good team. I think the people and composition of the team and if the skills of each member compliment the others etc and HR have a vital role in this respect.