Appointed Team

AntiPattern Name: Appointed Team

Problem: There are no perfect criteria for screening team members.

Context: You are building a software development organization to meet competitive cost and schedule benchmarks. You are staffing up to meet a schedule in a given market.

Forces: Empowerment depends on competency and the distribution of knowledge and power. The worst team dynamics can be found in appointed teams. The best team dynamics can be found in self-selecting teams. Broad interests (games, music and poetry) seem to align with successful team players.

Supposed Solution: Appoint teams according to management insight, needs,and biases.

Resulting context: A disempowered, egalitarian team unwilling to take extraordinary measures to meet project goals.

Real solution: Self-Selecting Team (http://web.archive.org/web/20040831234423/http://www.bell-labs.com/people/cope/Patterns/Process/section3.html)

Alternate link (the one above seems to be inactive): (http://users.rcn.com/jcoplien/Patterns/Process/section3.html)

Faulty belief: A group of people selected by management will immediately gel and become a team.

I saw the same idea in a great book called The Ropes To Skip and The Ropes To Know (ISBN 0471133043 ). A team was assembled by management to work on a project. The individuals were selected to be on the team because they were the best ones for the job. They all knew each other and wasted a great deal of time shooting the breeze back and forth. When one of the guys asked the outside consultant how management could let a bunch of crackpots work on such an important project (they obviously weren't selected on skill), the O/C replied with "But these people are the best people for the job. They already know each other. They know how to work with each other. They trust each other. When a team is selected on merit alone, everybody is wary that everybody else is out for themselves, so everybody in turn looks out for him or herself -- a self fulfilling prophecy, you see? And even if they do manage to come to trust each other, that takes time, see? So even though these people aren't the most talented, they are indeed the best members for the team..." -- BelTorak

CategoryAntiPattern