A team or a group

Group of individual coders or a team of developers?

Say you have a few apps to be provided in a couple of months. You also have a few developers in hand. There are 2 choices: Form a group or build a team.

Option 1: Group - Assign one developer to one app. Assign some to the server or database in associate with their skill set.

Option 2: Team — The whole team will work together to analyze the apps, break them down into components and self-assign to the components that match best with individual skill set. Team by default joins force to do the work as one unit.

The idea of option 1 will be:

• easy to manage. You -the manager or team lead — know who is doing what and can follow up one to one in single problem.
• one hold the knowledge. Anything about the app, you ask the developer who did the app. He can fix the bug and add new feature faster than anyone as it is his own work.
• high risk on individual. If one developer left, the equal skills person will be hard to get and learning curve will be long.
• time wasting for documenting as everyone has different skills and logic.
• duplicate work across the apps/projects.

The idea of option 2 will be:

• Agile management approach. Transparent works between team members.
• component development. The components will be re-used across the apps. No duplicate work will be done between the team.
• team holds the knowledge. Everyone knows the work of other in all apps/projects as the work is inter-changed. Component based development allows team member inter-change.
• inter-change work for the share components between team.
• low risk, easy to get new member and short time to become productive.

The mentality of the logic:

2 network, 1 db, 1 server, 2 web are not a team. If they dont work together as a team, they are a group of individual who works in the same project.

Try to think about a football team. All of them can play football. They can actually replace each other in most of the cases. The role each plays in the team is different only because the individual can contribute to the team better with the role.

Teamwork bases on component development not task.