Friday, July 19, 2013

Whom do you want in your team

I am working as a project leader. Now the weight of success or failure of a project lies on  my shoulder (kudos to my manager that he has been able to make me feel that way). I am interacting with lot of people on daily basis.

So essentially all my work involved is in planning and enabling people to get the job done. With this now i have also started thinking about what is a team and how to make it better (again kudos to my manager).

One thought is that what kind of people i will like to have it in my team.

Essentially there are 4 types of people (at least in software industry)

  1. Very bright and smart tech savy people who are very comfortable working with others.
  2. Bright but are hard to deal with. They like to be left alone and do their own thing.
  3. Not extremely bright but can do the work and are also good team players.
  4. They don't know why they are here
If you have people from category 1 in your team then consider yourself lucky and just enjoy the ride. Project will turn out OK.

People of category 4 are easy to figure out. If for some reason they are in your team, its your bad luck and you can discount productivity and make plans accordingly.

The real trouble begins when you have to choose from people of either category 2 or 3.

If i am not building a nuclear reactor, or a medical system on which the fate of humanity rests i will like to avoid type 2 people. With whatever little experience i have they have given me more trouble than happiness.

That is just me. What are your thoughts ?