Blockchain Team — first decisions
By Maciej Marut, Krzysztof Bury, Bartosz Dluzen
In previous articles we have gone through different possibilities of using blockchain. They might fit into what your organization needs. On the other hand thinking about those you might had found a better ones. As usual there is also a chance you cannot think of any use for those now.
Regardless of that, You — as a thought leader — decided it is worth to invest into the concept.
To be efficient in this investment you have to do two things.
First one is set the budget including ROI (Return on Investment) thresholds. You also need a point of no return date. This will be your safety net before you go too far. You will find this discussed in our other articles. We mention it again here because of its importance for your company as a whole.
Second — maybe more important one — you need a team. As in previous article here as well you will find couple of questions. As a bonus we have added different possibilities to answer those questions.
What type of Team do I need?
The first question we need to answer is whether we go with internal team, external vendor or a mixed solution. Each of them has got its pros and cons, some points to consider below.
External Vendor Team
(+) it is easier to demand from them
(+) you can check their success stories and references
(+) you can build contract based on results
(-) you are not building Intellectual Property in your organization
(-) their driver is to sell you more (including maintenance) instead of solving your problem
(-) It is harder to connect them with the real business when you are just experimenting
Internal Team
(+) you have people with business domain knowledge
(+) the driver is to create better organization and build something that will last
(-) there is no experience even to identify right people to supplement the team
(-) there is a base cost impact that might be hard to adress if project will fail
Mixed Team
(+) it is easier to expect from them true summary of your proof of concept
(+) you can build on vendor success stories and references
(+) you have people with business domain knowledge
(+) the driver is to create better organization and build something that will last
(-) communication will be the biggest challenge within the team
(-) collocation might be a challenge
(-) you have to set the right proportions of team members to have efficiency and accountability at the same time
Our personal favorite would be a mixed team with all its risks.
As a critical success factor we see, would be identification of the right people on your side and empowerment you can give. Right leader with appreciation for other people knowledge is your risk in the project of this nature. In one of the following article we will be going through basic skill set needed in this team as well as sizing it correctly.
