Chapter 28. Specialization Is for Insects
James O. Coplien
Robert Heinlein has a great quote on the topic of specialization:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight effectively, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
One of our favorite Scrum patterns is “Cross-Functional Team”, but there is much confusion about its meaning. Folks commonly assume it means that everyone should be able to do everything. This is probably ideal for minimizing talent blockages, but folks discount it as unrealistic and too costly from a training perspective. The intent behind cross-functional teams is that they should offer all competencies necessary to complete their work, and in particular, that developers collectively have all skills necessary to efficiently build product.
Why does Scrum call us to this kind of work community? First, to handle variance. You can’t staff a team with exactly the right number of UX designers, testers, programmers, and database people to match the workload ideally. The demand for each specialization changes both during the Sprint and from Sprint to Sprint. Over-engineer ...
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