Development Teams: The Key To Building The Right Team For the Job
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Before working custom software is developed, the right development teams must be in place. The movie, The Lord of the Rings (LoTR) portrays a striking model for developing the right team for the job at hand.
Of course, the LoTR saga is about the defeat of evil, not custom software coding. Yet, if you have vision, you can imagine how floundering in the shadows of a hopeless, encroaching darkness can be a metaphor for a difficult development job that cries for the right team, one capable of excellent leadership, collaboration and freedom of creativity.
We'll have to overlook that LoTR took place during a time when a couple rocks capable of predicting gloomy future outcomes existed as the highest form of technology.
Nonetheless, software development and destroying an evil gold ring absolutely require the deployment of teams composed of certain critical elements. The first and most important key is quality leadership.
Return of the King(s). Enter Gandalf, a wizard who surrounded himself with other leaders, keeping their respective abilities and situations in mind: A fox-shot elf prince possessed of excellent vision and a knack for announcing the obvious. Then we have a reluctant king (how leader-y can you get?) who, although not terribly chatty, also happens to be an expert swordsman. And of course there’s the little Hobbit that must carry the entire narrative. The wee fellow has little worldly experience but a talent for resisting a cursed ring and mediating conflict. The ability to withstand the fires of Mt. Doom and smooth over various conflicts is nearly as important as writing the software itself.
At any given time, the role of leadership shifts and evolves among our intrepid group depending on the circumstances, so creative talent and innovative solutions are not stifled by draconic and dark lord-ish management.
The Fellowship. The right development ensemble begins their great adventure by adopting each other in fellowship. They have intimacy of communication, collaboration and means of effectively relating to each other in spite of their diverse backgrounds and talent. If an elf and a dwarf can learn to collaborate, so can software engineers ... if you let them. The right team isn’t afraid to become cross functional within this Fellowship.
Forbes magazine suggests the very premise that Tolkien did: “Think of your team as puzzle pieces that can be placed together in a variety of ways.”
The Chasm from Whence It Came. The Fellowship remained committed to the same goal of ridding Middle Earth of a despotic dark lord. Granted they may have bickered about how to achieve this goal as collaborators often do, but the properly built development team always keeps the central goal in mind: Create working software quickly.
Fly, You Fools. Gandalf couldn’t just whip out his wizard’s staff to fix some tight situations, but was capable of doing so in others. This suggests an unnecessary restraint that hobbles even the best development teams. Coders need to be allowed to code to get things right and not be bound by the politics of fictional logic.
Regardless of if they are chasing orcs or fleeing a counterproductive situation, the right development teams run with their ideas. And remember, dwarves aren’t very good at cross-country but are excellent at the sprint.
If you are seeking the right development teams to create the best custom software for your organization, or are otherwise seeking the most talented software wizards, contact the Intellection group. or call 678-283-4283 for all your software needs.