Sheriff's Personal Weblog

Imagine you lead a small custom apps team with 7 developers or less, with each representing a part (puzzle piece) as in a jigsaw puzzle.  On a project that has stern deadlines, the project tasks are broken down into iterations.  Each iteration would have tasks under them.  It is common that you assign many individual tasks divided to each team member.  This is distribution.  However, there is an even better way to get most out of your team members.  Just like how a single puzzle piece is so unique both by its shape and the part of the picture it contains, you should make each team member feel that their part/role is as important as the overall big picture.  Even if a single part of the puzzle is missing, the big picture isn’t complete.  This also means knowning each team member’s strength and weaknesses (as in a jigsaw piece).

On the technical front, it is usually the person’s overall technical knowledge and about the project.  Both may not be the same!  It is important that all team member understands the overall big picture and how it would eventually be solved.  For an individual member, it is the awareness about the surrounding pieces.  And for a leader, it is the awareness of placement of each piece in the puzzle along their adjacent pieces.  Scale this out to small teams to bigger operations as well.  Interestingly, anyone could practice/could’ve already been practising this model even if they haven’t played a jigsaw puzzle before though

The advantages are:
- Resource allocation is at its best.
- Depending upon the member’s potential, the same member can play the role of two or more (at very adjacent places in the puzzle).
- Each member knows what should be asked and to whom.

Things to remember in this model:
- Team Leaders/Managers must ensure each team member’s awareness of both the entire big picture and the person’s individual role at every single iteration/task allocation.
- Got to stay away from the distribution model as it is very easy fall for it at time-constraint situations (Distribution model saves the situation but ends up exchanging legs for hands, for example).
- A visual representation that is circulated to the team on top of written task allocation always helps!