Building High Performance Teams

Building a high performance team: (quick ideas)

a) Create a safe environment where people can express themselves. Empower engineers as the main driving force of the project.

• Define expectations and roles. Management is a role and not a power position. Respect.
• Management manages processes, not people. Create the true sense of interdependence.
• Involve everyone in decisions that affects them and the project. Let the team define its goals and objectives.

ACB Bucharest core team in Kyiv to help move ACR there

b) Make sure that commitments are respected. No matter how small they are. Agile planning is a great tool for this.

• Plan in iterations. Adapt. Communicate. Make sure that, in the end, no debt is left for the following iteration.
• Honest failure is OK and safety is restored through re-planning.
• Visibility and clarity on common goals. 
• Celebrate successes.
• Management is fully involved in respecting the commitments it makes.

c) Build a learning environment. Learning is rewarding and involving. It increases cohesion, communication, commitment, involvement.

• Encourage learning. Learn from everything. 
• Promote initiative.
• Safe, enjoyable environment. Management is part of the team. Always. Common goals.
• Increase knowledge sharing, encourage diversity of thought and know-how.
• Increase productivity through new, innovative ways of doing things. Challenge the way things are done. Agree with the team on common variables to measure improvement. Celebrate improvement.
• Discourage repetitiveness. Encourage lateral thought.

Always respect a) if in b), a) and b) if in c).