The make of True Teams

Talking to CTOs and other technology leaders and their resourcing needs the question often comes up, what am I getting when getting a team. Am I getting a front-man (woman) and a bunch of bodies hiding in the background? Am I getting a bunch of developers/data engineers that I have to manage myself? Do they speak English? Do they have a spine?

I guess I understand why they would ask those questions but knowing how we do things it is kind of funny, because the answer is on the opposite side of the spectrum. We spend tremendous time in training, team bonding, culture, processes, tools (recently AI), effectiveness, etc, that these questions should almost be non-existent in our industry, yet there are competitors that just add warm bodies to the their teams. Often times our biggest problem in starting a new relationship is exactly that, educating our new client.

To answer the questions, what is a true team. It's a team that:

• Has a purpose

What is my sole existence in this company? Where am I going in life? What is my purpose on this team? What is my purpose with this client? Do I like my PM? Is my code up to par?

These questions need to be answered within the culture of the organization, within the collaboration inside the team, led by the PM and supported by an internal mentor/coach. There is absolutely no way in the world that these individuals and the team they belong can work as a team and proactively support a client if they don't answer these questions.

• Has a process

We can argue if an external team that has a mature process is automatically considered a waterfall team, and not agile, but that is a topic for another post. Any effective team needs to have an effective process. Agile teams MUST have a process.

The role of the PM on the team is to make sure that there is a perfect balance between clients' needs and teams' effective time. You push too hard and you burnout the team, you are too loose, the team has a downtime. Managing this is a tedious endeavor that PMs (God bless them) manage on a daily basis and at the end they don't often have enough credit for it.

• Has growth curve (personal & professional)

Every team needs to have a structured learning and growth. Natural growth happens regardless, we learn from things every day. But maximized growth comes from adding a layer of structured and purposeful growth for each person and a plan for team growth. This is yet again in the scope of the PM to make sure that their team are growing. In our case this is a joint effort by the technical leads, people department, coach/mentor, and the PMs tireless dedication to their team, full stop. Tip your PMs folks, they do a lot of great work.

• Is recognized

Yes, we can be the medieval leaders and crack the whip, or we can support the team with wisdom, personal growth and compassion, while keeping the effectiveness in mind. True recognition for their work comes from:

a) Understand their impact - THIS IS SUPER HARD TO KNOW! Often clients don't reveal this data, and you have nothing to compare it against inside one larger organization but a proper mechanism in place it is very doable.

b) Give a true recognition. "You've achieved 1.56% faster user story rate this month, great job!" - SUCKS! Recognizing people for achieving 'artificial' consequence is not a recognition. A true recognition is praising the reason why the consequence happened. Some of them may have learned something new, used a new tool, supported the team etc. These things MATTER!

In summary, True Teams are a complex mechanism, fungible, always morphing, always on the move and is affected by a lot of inside and outside forces. A proper nurturing, guardrails and support is needed in order for that "ball of sand" to stay strong and together, at all times.

Don't forget to tip your PM.

(No AI was used for this article)