Probably Random

Team Building

January 27, 2010 1:55 pm tonkas Random

As I’ve said before I go to Enterprise Tuesdays at the University of Cambridge.  A recent seminar was all about building teams and it seemed to come at just the right time (it was a great seminar!).  I’m trying to build the development team where I work and with all the usual interviews and tests and everything it was really useful to hear other people experiences.  All along we’ve been trying to build a team rather than pick a group of amazing individuals, and the team experience is one which is very important to us, it was nice to see this post on coding horror too.

Our main difficulty is fitting our team dynamic into the company’s infrastructure.  They are very much dictatorial and reactive; we were giving our schedule for Christmas promotions which needed development work at the beginning of December! needless to say it was shambolic.

One of the presenters made a point which was that interviews are a two way thing, it’s as much about the interviewee deciding if they like you.  The management here come across as fairly arrogant, sometimes the interviews we run feel like interrogations rather than interviews and twice I’ve had people ask when it’s the technical interview with just me there ‘is your boss always like that? if so I don’t want the job’.  The people I want in my team are those who were perceptive enough to notice that at interview and ask the question, the problem is… they are the ones who are most likely to be put off.  Not only does it put off those who we want to join, but it is embarrassing as the interviewer to have to defend policies which you don’t necessarily agree with.  This lead on to ‘Hygiene Factors’ where they were talking about the baseline of requirements, we have minimum legal holidays, very near maximum working hours (plus being on call 24/7 and no company benefits until you’ve been here for 5 years… we do however have interesting work to do, which is what is keeping the team together at the moment.

One of my main faults whilst building the team here was to underestimate how much time it takes to bring new people in to the team, get them up to speed with our code, systems and practices (try and stick to conventions it’s much easier!) which has meant extra pressure on me to deliver new work, my own work and improve the team.

Having good, passionate and motivated people in your team, who aren’t all the same but can get along, having a great working environment and an interesting job to do (one which challenges but doesn’t overwhelm) is really important.  As is having a  perceptive manager who understands people and their biases and goals so that the work can remain interesting and challenging.