More on High Performing Teams

Last month Prasoon posted thoughts on high performing teams - what is a high performing team, what are their foundational qualities and behaviors.

Here are few more thoughts on what can we do to create high performing teams:

• Focus on Team Composition:
  
  • Ability: Generally, IT project team staffer / manager focus on this well
  • Personality: Mostly ignored, but very critical to reach to high performing state. Right mix of Personality Types (Introvert vs. Extrovert, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, Judging vs. Perceiving) is required to complement each other.
  • Size: With Scrum, we have increased focus on not exceeding the optimal size. What about the minimum team size? Can I say a 2 members team (even if both are generalists) is optimally sized?
  • Diversity: Put all Java "gurus" on one project for 6 months and ask them to do pair programming. They may not literally fight, but will definitely get fed up and prefer to work individually!!! Diversity is key to gel the team and to establish trust and respect within the team
    
  • Roles: Leaderless team is hot these days... But, lets not mistaken it with team without any roles and responsibilities. A high performing team should have at least one or more people playing each of the following roles:
    

• Focus on sustaining and improving motivation level of teams. It's a well established fact that motivated team perform better.
  

Motivational Potential Score = [(SV+TI+TS)/3]*A*F
where,
SV= Skill Variety
TI= Task identity (is it ideal for me?)
TS= Task significance (does it make difference in organizational affairs)
A= Autonomy
F= Feedback

So, what should we be doing to increase motivation level of our teams? Thoughts?

Is 80-20 rule justified for investment in IT?

The heat is on! With every day passing by, the financial tsunami is rapidly spreading across the globe. The key issues are:

• Liquidity
• High cost of capital
• Unavailability of credit
• Volatile forex markets
• Very low levels of confidence in economy

While the Indian regulatory system seems to have minimized the impact on banking system, the impact on IT industry deserves detailed look.


Mr. Sudhakar Ram, CMD, Mastek Ltd and India Business Leader of the Year 2007 has written an insightful article in The Economic Times yesterday.

"Impact of the crisis on the Indian IT" - Mr. Sudhakar Ram

He highlights a very interesting point that "when we dig into the reasons for the crisis, while we can blame blind optimism and greed, at a more fundamental level it is a failure of systems... ...Better controls and risk management systems governing individual firms as well as the entire financial system would have helped to track the quantum of leverage and the risks associated with it — both from the perspective of board governance and regulatory oversight."

While every CIO is contemplating on what is the right amount to invest in IT during 2009, Mr. Ram has a perspective that I can't agree more.

"For too long, large institutions have been trying to get away with spending 80% of IT dollars just on maintenance — keeping the lights on — and only 20% on new initiatives.

In fact, in a recent Information Week article, Rob Preston says that IT’s Number One priority is to release money for new projects. He says: "If you think you can lay low under the corporate radar or continue to argue that the 80-20 rule is an immutable law of IT physics, then you're due for a wake-up call."


It really boils down to what goals we set for ourselves - 'tide over the tsunami' or 'prepare to emerge as a leader'. What are your thoughts on "right" investment in IT?