My talk from The Lead Developer New York 2017. A great team is a like a great dish, balanced flavors, tastes, textures and smells combine to create something unique and delicious. I’ve made the mistakes of trying to build unbalanced teams either with poor distributions of experience, bad combinations of temperament, clashing skill sets or lack of diversity. I’ll share those mistakes. I’ll also share some of the things I did right (either intentionally or unintentionally) to create the teams that have worked very well. I’ll provide some things to look out and consider for as you build a team or just expand the one you have.

1. Finding the right ingredients
for the your perfect team
Kevin Goldsmith, Chief Technology Officer
@kevingoldsmith

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I’ve learned a lot of lessons.

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The hard way.

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The most important thing you
will hear from me today

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Be thoughtful. Be deliberate.

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Be strategic.

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Learn. Adapt.

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Be agile.

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Be agile. To a point.

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People are not software.

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Choosing the right recipe

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Why does this team exist?

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• Which Skills?
• What Roles?
• What levels of seniority for each skill?
To achieve your mission, what is needed?

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• Budget?
• Time?
• Existing people?
What are your constraints?

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Every person you hire creates a
new team.

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Diverse teams

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• Diverse teams produce better results
• Diversity is along many axes
• Personality
• Experience level
• Human (ie: in your DNA)
Diversity

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• Great ways to understand team
• DiSC
• SDI (Strength Development Inventory)
• Myers-Briggs
• 5 Dynamics
• Looking to build a set of balanced approaches to problem solving
• Create healthy tension
Personality Diversity

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• Balance of experiences and approaches
• Create a mentoring culture
• Build the next set of technical leaders
Experience Diversity

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Spider Maps are great tools for this.
Understanding current team strengths

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Create a spider map of the diversity of your current team.
Choose any axes that make sense for you. Have you learned
anything about the strengths and weaknesses of your
current team from this exercise? If you were going to hire
someone new, would this help inform for the kind of person
that you should look for?
Map your current team

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a parting thought

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Be mindful of the humans!

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Thank you!

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I would love your feedback!
http://bit.ly/teamingredients