The Puzzle of Development Teamwork
It’s not always easy to discover and assemble all the pieces.
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The purpose of this article is to shed some light on what is needed for software development teams to perform in the long run. There are many pieces of that puzzle that, if not addressed well, could limit the potential and output of a team.
Puzzle pieces of the teamwork
Every development team can make a list of activities that they need to do to be successful and consistent. These are the building blocks of their work.
For example:
- Aligning with the business goals and defining requirements
- Managing stakeholders expectations
- Organizing daily work and processes
- Architecting solutions (technical decisions)
- Handling technical dependencies with other teams
- Coding
- Testing
- Releasing
- Bug fixing
- Maintenance of the products, upgrading, migrations, etc.
- Training and knowledge sharing
- Coming up with new ideas and catching up with the industry
- Hiring
- Onboarding new team members
- Developing good personal dynamics (cooperation, conflict management, etc.)
- Monitoring and improving teams productivity
- Performance reviews and careers development
- Various administrative tasks (payroll, managing days off, time spent, employment contracts, etc.)
This is an example of an imaginary team that develops a product that has no front-end. It is why there’s no design/UI activity.
For your team, the list of activities is likely different, but not too much.
Why is the entire list important?
Imagine what would happen if one of the activities would stop. Pick a random one and try (it’s an interesting mental experiment). A group of people needs to do all the things on their list; otherwise, the team can’t perform.
