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| <mainDescription><p> |
| Good software development teams are made up of a collection of people who collaborate effectively. How the project team |
| is staffed, by either adding or removing people, will greatly impact the team's productivity. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| When staffing a development project, consider the following advice: |
| </p> |
| <ol> |
| <li> |
| Include people who fit into the existing team culture. Good teams don't just appear magically one day, but instead |
| are grown and nurtured over time. Invite people onto the team who will add value and furthermore who will not be |
| disruptive. Similarly, you may need to invite someone to leave the team if they do not fit well with the existing |
| team and they don't seem to be able to change. |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| People should want to be on the team. People are far more productive when they're working on a project that they |
| believe in and want to see succeed. |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| Build your team with "generalizing specialists". A generalizing specialist is someone with one or more technical |
| specialties who actively seeks to gain new skills in both their existing specialties as well as in other areas, |
| including both technical and domain areas. Generalizing specialists add value to the team because they have |
| specialized skills that you need while at the same time appreciate the full range of issues that a general |
| understanding of the software development process and the business domain offers. |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| Include stakeholders. Stakeholders, including business stakeholders such as end users and technical stakeholders |
| such as operations staff, can add significant value to your team. Instead of just interviewing them to gain |
| information from them, or asking them to review your work, why not include them as active participants on the team? |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| Include specialists for short-term, specialized work. Specialists can still add value on an agile development team, |
| particularly when they have specific skills and experience which existing team members do not have. It can often be |
| more effective to bring a specialist into the team for a short period of time to help with a specific task, such as |
| installation and setup of an application server, the development of an architectural spike, or simply taking part |
| in a review. |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| Give people opportunities to evolve their skills. At the beginning of a project the team may not have the full |
| range of skills that it needs, or perhaps a few individuals may not have the skills required to fulfill the roles |
| they are filling. This is a very common risk taken on by the majority of project teams for the simple reasons that |
| you often can't find the perfect combination of people and even if you could you still want to provide people with |
| opportunities to grow as professionals. |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| Remember Brook's Law. Adding people to a late project will only make it later [<a class="" |
| href="./../../../openup_basic/guidances/supportingmaterials/references,_9ToeIB83Edqsvps02rpOOg.html" |
| guid="_9ToeIB83Edqsvps02rpOOg">BRO95</a>]. The corollary is that removing people from a late project may speed |
| things up [<a class="" |
| href="./../../../openup_basic/guidances/supportingmaterials/references,_9ToeIB83Edqsvps02rpOOg.html" |
| guid="_9ToeIB83Edqsvps02rpOOg">AMB04</a>]. |
| </li> |
| </ol> |
| <p> |
| Sometimes you will need to go against some of this advice due to environmental constraints. Perhaps only specialists |
| are available (although there's nothing stopping a specialist from becoming a generalizing specialist), perhaps there |
| aren't as many opportunities for people to try new things as they would like, or perhaps the stakeholders aren't |
| available to be active members of the team. The advice above is designed to lead to as high-performing a team as |
| possible, but even partial adherence to this guideline will improve the team. |
| </p></mainDescription> |
| </org.eclipse.epf.uma:ContentDescription> |