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by Jared Richardson.
Original Post: Build Teams, Not Products
Feed Title: Jared's Weblog
Feed URL: http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/index.rss
Feed Description: Jared's weblog.
The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers.
Last week in Reston, Virginia, I had an interesting conversation after one of the talks. One of the conference attendees was asking me why so many of the techniques we covered involved getting people talking. We covered short code reviews, daily meetings, and more.
As we stood there I realized why in a very short, clear phrase. Perhaps it was the cold medicine I was on at the time, but I liked the way it sounded.
I believe in building teams, not products.
Don't get me wrong. Products pay the bills. Products are very important.
But...
I feel like I'm saying "I don't grow apples. I grow apple trees." One is a result of the other. Overly focusing on the apple can cost you the tree.
When you build your development staff into a team, a single cohesive whole, the products are the by-product, not the focus.
When you focus on the product, you end up burning people out, and quite often, on the road to a Death March.
I try to use practices that encourage, and even require, team members to interact. The short daily meeting is a great example. Everyone is in a single room. Everyone has to answer three questions:
What did you do yesterday?
What problems did you encounter?
What do you plan to do today?
Organize your daily work around the people you work with... make an effort to build the team. I think you'll find the products to be a nice side effect.
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