Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules

Long-Term Teambuilding

The team of Amish farmers is a good model of the perfect, jelled team. But that team didn't form overnight. Those farmers had been together for years, and their families had been together for years before that. You can't expect performance as dramatic as raising a barn in a single day from a temporary team. That kind of productivity comes only from permanent teams.

Here are some reasons to keep teams together permanently.

Higher productivity. With a permanent-team strategy, you keep a group together if it jells into a team, and you disband it if it doesn't. Rather than breaking up every team and rolling the dice on every new project to see whether new teams jell or not, you roll the dice only after you've lost. You stockpile ...