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15The New Recruit

Get your hiring process in order with a Recruitment Funnel, sourcing by the founders, and some Skills Tests and Work Samples.

 

Okay, that hurt. A great team member quitting, because he received a better offer elsewhere, is never an enjoyable thing. But in our case, with a team of just a handful of people, and a Burn Chart that showed it was difficult enough already to get most of our work done before the Project San Diego deadline, it was really quite painful.

Whatever happens, don’t panic. That’s what I tell myself at least 42 times per year. So, I didn’t.

I discussed the unfortunate situation with the rest of the team during our next Daily Cafe. They all felt the impact. The thing I feared most was that it might demotivate some of the others and start a domino effect that could wipe out our team until I had nobody left. Fortunately, this didn’t happen. In fact, the team came back to me a day later and said, “We discussed it. We like the project, we love our work, and we enjoy this team. We’ve decided to stick to the goal and release a public version before the deadline.” The pain of the departure of one member pulled the rest of the team closer together.

We discussed the Project Backlog, reprioritized features, and committed to a trimmed-down release that would still be doable and acceptable. And I felt proud of our little company. If we ever manage to create ...