How to build a development team

Assembling a team of super-heroes

Back in my early days in my career, I was sure that development was all about a single warrior. You, as an engineer, have to know everything, handle all possible tasks. Asking for help? That is a weakness! I think that some of us are still thinking this way. I met a few devs who would never ask for advise and better struggle with the problem, but alone. There are several possible downsides:

• Potentially bad solution or even no solution at all;
• Dev will just burn out soon.

Luckily, the industry realized that teams are going to be a nice idea!… but how can we be sure that we assembled a good one? Superheroes in front of laptops! Fuff… That’s a hard one. Let’s try to figure it out.
You always have to try to balance skills in your team. Have strong devs with strong background and knowledge base nicely mixed with youngsters who are hungry for experience and work.
Bring the mood to your team. It sounds weird, but it’s a nice idea to have a person on the team, who can carry an atmosphere.
Let’s check different superheroes:

• Detailer: person, who is always into details. Details are the hardest part. Small improvements, gaining this last performance percent, reduce a time of build by 10 seconds. That’s all about Detail-hero.
• Icebreaker: the hero who is always in a rush. New task to take? Here we go! New Tech to pick up? Easy for Icebreaker. This superhero will bring courage to the team. There will be no fear in front of a clean page. Be aware that rush can lead to not completing some task. Give an advise that rush is good, but it’s better to have some milestones in your mind.
• Managerizer: you need to keep things under control, right? Meetings, workflow on one hand or CI/CD, build processes on another hand. This hero can belong to devs or to scrum masters. Anyway, your team will benefit from having one.
• Defender: every team struggles sometimes from external interruptions. Keep things under control. Sometimes “No” is a way. Here we have a real hero, to be honest. You have to be brave to decline an appeal from another team/management.

Here is a “must have” list of team members. It’s not a rule. Just feels right to have it. Keep a nice mood in your team, have a “healthy” courage and just try to enjoy working with others.

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