I think everyone who opens the article now has different expectations. The perfect team can exist in many different ways. It can be your family with your kids or only you and your wife when you have no kids. It can be your football team or your best friends which you know since you were a little kid.
But at one point, all teams have something where they are similar. They worked out in a perfect way. In good and in bad times they stand and fall together. Nothing will come between these team members. I want to share now my experience of a perfect team and how this was created and working together.
I worked in a team that was completely built new and had a size of 7 people. One Product Manager, one Software architect, two backend developer, and 3 front end developer. Honestly, I worked before in some other Scrum or Kanban teams of different sizes, but this team was very special. Not because of the size or the different roles inside the team. It was because of the characters.
Diversity
Most teams are build by hard skills or experience in special topics to build or maintain a project. But what is much more important is to have people who are very diverse. You need people with different gender, different levels of experience, different ages, different relationships (singles, couples, family members,…) and of course different skill sets.
Now you will ask why? To create a special product or maintain an existing one you don’t need special people. You know what the product is about or need as a skill set, right?. But my experience special in software development is that everything can change very fast. Today, where every company tries to work agile, it is flexibility which is one of the most important points.
Flexibility
Flexibility is a huge challenge for many people. No fixed structure, no fixed tasks or product changes every week. Because every person is looking for a safe place. In their personal and business environment. Fast and short-term changes are the exact opposite of that. But what you need to be flexible?
In my opinion and from my experience one major factor is an open mindset. You must be open to new ideas, be enthusiastic about new things and for that, you have to be curious. Don’t stop learning! Every time interested in new tech stacks, new skill sets and be ready to get out of your comfort zone. Step out of your psychological security zone! And exactly these changes are very hard for many people.
To be open assumes that you are a good listener and have a good empathy. You should be a problem solver who recognizes problems around you. From the user side, in your team or with a colleague. When you are trying to solve real problems you are much more motivated. You know what you are working for. Sounds very easy, right?
But to have an open mindset and be a good listener assumes that you are also very capable of conflict. And this is most of the time the hardest part for every one of us. And I’m also inside this group. To hear from someone that your idea is not good enough. Your work was really bad. These of course not a situation in which you want to find yourself. But everyone was in this situation one or more times and the question is how you react to this message?
Reflect yourself
And now you are in a situation where you will recognize good or bad colleagues for your perfect team! The good colleague will be open for a discussion because he or she asking himself: Is this right? For me is this behavior, not a weak one. When you reflect on yourself from time to time: “If I do a good job? Have I a good skillset of communication? Or am I a colleague which is good for the team? You are willing to improve yourself in every way.
And THAT is what a perfect team needs! People who are willing to improve themselves to be a better part of the team. The result will be a team that is very flexible and every time hungry to learn and do new things. And trust me, I was lucky enough to be part of a team like that. Every member of the team was willing to learn and accept his or her role. Everyone wanted to be part of something bigger! We were willing to go the extra mile for ourselves and also for other team members.
Because everyone wanted to help and be open to team problems, we had very short and direct communication ways. We raised up problems fast and direct so that every time a fast solution was found. Trust and respect were our daily business. We solved problems very fast because our workflow had no weak parts or bottlenecks. We followed all one goal and worked hard and with passion.
Hope you find your perfect team too
What can I say? I wish everyone to be part of a team like this and find his perfect team. You will recognize very fast if you are in your perfect team. When you start to recognize that you don’t just ask for help by problems and also failures are very welcome. And the team sees this as progress and learning effect. Then you are starting in YOUR perfect team. Here you can step out of your comfort zone and do great new things. This will help you to grow! And when everyone can do this because of the safe environment, you will have a very flexible and high-performance team.
When I remember what my perfect team did in only 1 year. It was awesome and the whole company was stunning about our work progress. And this is now again the best time to say „Thank you” to my perfect team I ever worked on. Thanks, Fanny, Tali, James, Giuseppe, Fedor, and Steffen. It was a pleasure to work in a team like this with so much joy and passion.