This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Laurent Bossavit. Original Post: Random Staffing Feed Title: Incipient(thoughts) Feed URL: http://bossavit.com/thoughts/index.rdf Feed Description: You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all alike. You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all different. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Laurent Bossavit Latest Posts From Incipient(thoughts)

I had the pleasure recently of hearing Johanna Rothman's voice again - not in person, alas, but through her excellent IT Conversations interview (deftly conducted by Roy Osherove). I've been exposed to Johanna's writings for a while, but to hear some of these same thoughts (mixed with reminiscence and advice) in her own, conversational voice got me thinking again about the issue of hiring, and in particular of forming project teams.

If I had to single out one post of Johanna's to summarize what I take away from her writings on hiring, this post summarizing what I call "random staffing" would be the one. The way to hire well is to hire based on a broad range of skills, and to hire based on how well the person is likely to fit her role and fit in with the team. Hiring based on keyword matching over popular technologies and quantitative experience: "3 years of Java, 4 years of C, 2 years of MS-Project..." - that is random staffing: you might be no worse off picking a CV from the pile at random. Hence Johanna's advice and the concrete tools and techniques she recommends: using auditions, asking candidates to reveal their values and principles of action through behaviour-description questions, hiring for diversity along various axes.

What got me thinking is, exactly the same issues apply to picking people to form a team. Suppose the hiring problem is more or less solved - the organization has mostly good people on board now. Are we out of the woods yet ? Well, no - we need to ensure that the same principles are used in staffing teams. Given the effort involved in hiring well, isn't it all too likely that teams will suffer from "random staffing" even if hiring as a whole is on a sound basis?

One thing that bothers me is that in organizations large enough for this to matter (which means a fair number of teams, say from twenty people on up) the hiring process will heavily involve and be largely controlled by a HR department. Where does the knowledge gathered by HR during the hiring process end up once candidates are hired ? How to set things up so that team staffing is consistent with hiring ?