Project Success Factors : Does Your Team Get Along?
One truism in the software development world, consulting or no, is that (to paraphrase a Jack Welch line) - if you get the people thing right, everything else will fall into place.
One thing I have learned - in both projects we have had to rescue, and even in our own failures, is that the root cause of most issues comes down to a team not getting along. When things are working cohesively:
* Information - bad and good - flows both upwards and downwards freely. Better decisions get made.
* The players know their role. There is little ambiguity about who is responsible for what.
* Decisions are made based on observed data, in other words, evidence, rather than emotion.
On the other hand, when fear becomes present in teams, we get messenger shooting, which leads to communication breakdowns, which leads to political positioning, which leads to a total absence of any semblance of working in the interest of anything other than one's own personal interests.
So - when you are embarking on a project - you need to ask yourself... does this team work? Regardless of the skill level of the individuals, does this group work together. As I have pointed out before, people are not fungible units of talent. If your group does not work - I can almost guarantee you will fail to achieve the goals of the project - regardless of the sum of talent present in the group.