I have worked on over 10 projects in the last 6 and half years of my career. Sometimes when I look back at them, I cherish the projects which gave me an opportunity to work with a great team, much more than the one where we delivered 2 months ahead of schedule.
A team which worked on a Malpractice Insurance application (2004), and another one building a Leasing application (2006) clearly stand out of all the other teams. In fact one of the teams I work in currently is a close next, and that is probably the reason for this train of thought.
The team dynamics is so great in these teams which immediately allows for a lot of innovative thinking and high performance, since the team would have already got its basics right. It is very tempting to retain these teams as is, and do another assignment, but working in a big organization does not always give you this luxury.
It is difficult to put in words what makes a team great, but I will make an attempt in a later post.
(Note to self -> So strive to build a great team, it is probably what you will remember and cherish for years.)
Ironically then, I've always considered that Medical Malpractice team in '04 to have had the worst team chemistry that I've ever experienced. Talent, yes. Chemistry and throughput, no. I'm glad your experiences were better than mine.
ReplyDeleteExperiences were similar. But back in India we had a good team going where people learned a lot, both .net and Agile :-). That set of dynamics with new experienced hires open to new ways of doing things and learning from each other was great.
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