Sunday, February 15, 2009

Allow team to select their own team members

This is the story of a self-organising team with accountability for their performance. One of the major issues for them was that they have to deal with team members appointed by management, and who was then just assigned to them. Some of these did not have the necessary technical expertise, and did not fit with the team culture. One of the characteristics of a self-organising team is that they self-select team member and membership. After several team members resigned, mainly because they did not fit in with the team culture, and the competent team members were no longer willing to pick up the additional load due to lack of experience, the team was allowed to take ownership of the recruitment of new team members. As a team they decided what was the importance expertise and experience they need, and then as a team they setup the interview process. They define some puzzles of actual problems and bugs they have encountered. The candidates then have to solve these for real as part of the interview process. The short list of candidates for passed this test, were then invited to socialise with the team - working with them for a day. And the final short list were then following the normal company interview process for compliance, but the team still made the final selection. The success of this approach was evident in the short time the new team members took to become productive and the coherence within the team. What it did not manage to address was the lack of motivation and a bit of laziness and 'no care' of one new team member. But, now the team has to manage this and could not just point back to management for assigning them with this team member.

No comments:

Post a Comment