I’ve thought a lot about what the most effecient way to build a team in the past years. I’ve worked in both larger teams as well as very small teams that barely would even be counted as a team and there are a few things that have worked exceptionally well and some things that have been less ideal as well.

Self-driving teams

No matter if the team is big or small the best thing to to make them be as autonomous and have as much mandate over their own work as possible. Small, cross-functional teams that have end-to-end ownership of their own work which are responsible for everything from ideation and design to development, testing, and operation of their services makes the people involved empowered to

Cultural fit above knowledge

If you are aiming to have a premium team in a premium company then hiring for talent and always improving the baseline makes sense. This cannot be done in an environment where rapid hiring is a norm as you need to prioritize hiring top talent and emphasize cultural fit within the teams. Key is to look for individuals who not only possess the necessary technical skills but also align with the company’s values and principles. Cultural fit ensures that team members can collaborate effectively and share a common vision. Most other things can be trained.

Your workspace should be your laboratory

If you are not constantly learning then you are left behind. Your team members need to be encouraged to learn and experiment - but it is not wrong to make sure that they themselves are responsible for the failures that impact the overall business. Sure, you have full responsibility of the application that you deployed, but be sure that you are solving the issues that comes with using non-standard deployments.

Eat your own dogfood

To be able to foster a culture where these above talent running in autonomous teams that are constantly experimenting you will need to invest in tools. The technologies that enable effective communication and collaboration among teams, ensuring knowledge sharing and seamless cooperation. Have you ever worked for a company that doesn’t have a good platform for instant messaging and video calls for example? Or no personal accounts where you can use company products and experiment with them to find out what the customer painpoints are? Then you know the pains of not having access to good tooling.

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