Jeff Atwood’s recent blog about bad apples reminded me about something I’ve given a lot of though about over my career. What is more important, the quality of the members of the team or the quality of the process they follow.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the quality of the members of the team is far more important than the process they follow. I’m a huge fan of process. There needs to be rules that are followed and measurements tracked and analyzed, but the nature of those rules and measures can be very different when the team is made up of highly skilled and productive members. The question is what are your experiences with a highly effective team vs a highly effective process?
People are a first-order determinant of project success. Process comes next, tools come last.
However, experience suggests that the most effective people are those who have excellent process (or ‘transverse’) knowledge, over domain (‘specific’) knowledge.
Specifically, knowledge of how to collaborate (ability to ask for help when needed, for instance), knowledge of how to communicate (what makes a meeting effective, writing well, using email wisely), and knowledge of how to organize one’s work (dividing work into tasks, planning the tasks, executing the plan, tracking divergence from plan).
So, always aim for ‘good people’ but be aware of ambiguities in the very phrase ‘good people’.