<story><title>Staying on the path to high performing teams (2018)</title><url>https://lethain.com/durably-excellent-teams/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I have to agree with the other commenters about #1. Adding people adds team overhead, and that is &lt;i&gt;killer&lt;/i&gt;. It’s actually fairly surprising how people still think of that as a solution, when there is so much prior art, showing it’s a lot less effective than you’d think &lt;i&gt;(see Brooks, Fred -The Mythical Man-Month)&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I encounter people all the time, that are inordinately proud of their infrastructure and process, and how that reduces team overhead, while allowing them to treat engineers like LEGO blocks. I worked for a Japanese company, and they actually make this work (sort of, and at a big price). It requires a fairly massive and inflexible structure (despite being labeled “agile,” it tends to be remarkably rigid).&lt;p&gt;There’s absolutely no substitute for a seasoned, &lt;i&gt;experienced&lt;/i&gt; team that has worked together for &lt;i&gt;years&lt;/i&gt;, and is secure in its cohesiveness. “Tribal Knowledge” is a dirty word in today’s business culture, but it is, hands down, the most efficient “team glue” in the world. It is also thousands of years old. No high-tech equipment required. Mammoth hunters worked as a team, and achieved big results. Military teams are as old as history, and that is all about commoditizing “tribal knowledge,” and investing in &lt;i&gt;people&lt;/i&gt;, not just weapons and tactics.&lt;p&gt;When I read “add slack,” I was like “How does adding a gab tool improve innovation?”. Then I read that it meant adding downtime&amp;#x2F;flex goal stuff, and totally agree.</text></comment>
<story><title>Staying on the path to high performing teams (2018)</title><url>https://lethain.com/durably-excellent-teams/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fconnor</author><text>&amp;quot;When falling behind, the system fix is to hire more people until the team moves into treading water.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I actually disagree with this statement. Teams can be falling behind for a variety of reasons and throwing more people at the problem can often cause further issues especially if the domain &amp;#x2F; technology &amp;#x2F; code base &amp;#x2F; system ..... Is complex.&lt;p&gt;Onboarding people into a team is an incredibly costly exercise, to do it while a team is already struggling will often create a worse problem. You need to be sure that the reason the team is struggling is purely an hour&amp;#x27;s in the day and not due to other factors.</text></comment>