People First

Author: Ron Lancaster
Date: June 19th, 2005

Workflow Management Solution for Medium-sized Development Organizations

People First describes a method for organizing and assigning work within medium-sized Development groups.

Executive Summary

A potential problem for growing organizations that attempt to maintain a "flat" organization is that people tend to be viewed as being interchangeable for work assignments. Viewing people as being interchangeable can lead to decreased productivity and decreased product quality.

A second potential problem is that leadership, informal or formal, is often not recognized and thus is less likely to be present or felt. This lack of leadership, especially technical leadership, can have large negative impacts on the quality of work products.

People First advocates organizing high-performing teams of 3-5 people first, then assigning projects to teams instead of individuals as a a solution to these and other problems which will be discussed in this paper.

Organize Small, High-Performing Teams First

The basic premise of People First is that small, 3 to 5 person teams are organized with the intent that they are stable over time. That is, the team members do not change often or ever over years. Each team member is assigned a role of technical lead (technical architect), team lead (small team management), and/or team member (developer). A single team member could share these roles, for example, a team lead can also be the technical lead.

Once the Development organization has been divided into small teams, then work is assigned to teams instead of to individuals. The teams are intended to be self-assigning and self-organizing. Self-assigning in that the work assigned to the team is then divided between team members on a best fit basis according to the team. Self-organizing in that the team is expected to manage and identify processes that best work. For example, the team may choose to practice XP while another team chooses else.

Contractor Management