Knowing Your Team

Knowing your team is the first step to successfully run a team and to complete software development tasks, because if you have no idea about your team’s ability and team member’s expectations, it’s hard for you to correctly and precisely make any team development plan and software development schedule. After all, software development tasks are all done by people. Knowing your staff’s ability and expectation could better help you reasonably position your team. Otherwise, as time goes on, the gap between the reality and expectation gets larger and larger. Sooner or later, it could damage the harmonious team working atmosphere and lead to failed software development.

 

When talking about knowing your team, there are two situations you, as a team leader, need to deal with.

 

1.       If you are a new comer to a team, how can you get familiar with your team members as quickly as possible?
In realistic talent market, when facing inevitable job change, you choose to join in an organization and lead an already established team. The most important thing for you at the time is to know your team member in terms of team average and individual capacity. Conducting a fake job interview probably is a simple and effective way. You can ask HR give your each team member’s resume and his/her past performance. Then hold a 1:1 talk with each team member to give you and your team member a chance to introduce education background and past working experience as well as any career desire in the future. This face-to-face talk should be a good starting point for you to build a team. Besides trying to get information as much as you want, you also should sincerely answer any questions your team member may want to know. Building trust is a basis for a successful team, which will be addressed in the later chapter. Being familiar with each other in the first place is the first step to build trust.
Few years ago, when I joined in an organization and led an already established team, I immediately got a software development task and was asked by my boss to give him a draft project plan. We all know any project plan depends on work efforts and work efficiency of the team. Without any idea of the team, any project plan I make can not make sense. So intuitively I realize that getting familiar with the team and team member ASAP is the most important thing I should do at the time. Finally a fake job interview process helps me get first understanding of the team and team member so as to draft a feasible project plan.

 

2.   As time goes on, how can you ensure you still know your team?
      As a team leader, especially after you work with the team for a long time and successfully deliver some work results, it often has you take it for granted that you still best know your team and team members. But the opposite may be true. There are lots of reasons to cause change. For instance, the team member’s expectation would change as his/her capacity improves. She or he may want more challenge or want to touch new development area. Only if you correctly and precisely understand your team member’s development desire up to date, can you maintain the team morale and productivity in the long run.
Regular 1:1 and face-to-face talk with team member is a good method to keep your understanding for them in sync. There are some kinds of the talk, such as monthly outside lunch or quarterly performance review talking. You can use these formal or informal ways to talk about your observation for your team member, meanwhile you can seek real feedback from your team member.