TypeCasted

Team dynamics play a large part in the success or failure of a project. Often times they play a bigger role in an application making it successfully to production then the collective skill set of a team. I have had the opportunity to work on teams that have had both good and bad dynamics. The difference is night and day. A team that works well together and collaborates  is far more motivated, excited, and concerned with over all quality of the end product. Sadly the experiences I have had on teams with lousy dynamics are just the opposite. Team members will isolate themselves, quality will drop exponentially and team members stop caring because they are frustrated. This reduces the chances of creating a usable finished product to almost zero.

Something that I have found to be true in my tenure in the software development business is that personalities to a very large degree make or break a team dynamic.  In fact more important than the enumerated skill sets of a team are the personalities of the team members. Personality say a lot about a developers ability to work within the confines of a team and a methodology. Below I describe some of the personality types that I have seen on the various teams I have been on over time.

The Cherry Picker

The cherry picker hunts and pecks away at the requirement backlog, only working on requirements he/she finds interesting or easiest. What is worse, is that often times a Cherry Picker will break down a given requirement into several parts, again only working on the aspects he/she finds simple or interesting. Cherry Pickers never finish a requirement. They are done when they get board or confused caring very little about the state of the work  when they quit. This leads to the endless cycle of a requirement going from dev to test and back to dev. Cherry Pickers are bad.

The BA Developer

The BA Developer is one of the most frustrating personality types to work with. A BA Developer will find things he/she believes are shortcomings or missing requirement in a current system, decide without consulting other team members that it is important and do the work right now (99% of the time there is no defect or requirement to track the work against.) Because the BA Developer knows that the actions he/she is taking will be looked down upon by other team members no design discussion happens leading to fragile implementations of ‘features’ that may or may not be needed. Once the BA Developer completes his/her ‘enhancement’ the BA Developer will contact the team member he/she feels will be least appalled by the actions taken by the BA Developer. The BA Developer will then show the perceived weak team member the changes that were made. A BA Developer if confronted will claim things like ‘I have not checked anything in, I just wanted to see how it would look’ caring very little to the untracked wasted time that brings down the overall velocity of a sprint. The BA Developer is in my opinion one of the most toxic personality types to have on a team. Trumped only by the absolute worse The Sneaker.

The Sneaker

The Sneaker does not care about process, teamwork, standards, patterns, requirements or quality. You may be totally unaware that a Sneaker is among you until  you see first hand their handy work. The Sneaker is much like BA Developer with one critical infuriating difference. The Sneaker skips the showing, checks in the code and says nothing of it. When source control fingers The Sneaker, and you choose to confront the offender The Sneaker will say things like ‘well I mentioned it’, or ‘I talked to this person or that person’. You should fear above all other personality types The Sneaker.

The No Google-er

The No Google-er seems harmless at first, though somewhat annoying. When faced with a problem, their first instinct is to ask whoever is near by. Overtime if other developers allow this to continue, The No Google-er actually forgets about the vast resources available to us by simply asking a question to the handy text box on www.google.com. Often times they are in denial that a thing called the ‘internet’ exists. The No Google-er not only wastes other team members time he/she is responsible for a disproportionate percentage of defects reported, a problem that is greatly compounded around vacation season when their human search engines are out of town.

The Watcher

The Watcher is a strange personality type who’s motivation is as illusive as it is unpredictable. The single trait that all Watchers have in common however, is that they will hold others up to standard they themselves refuse to follow. A Watcher is the first to comment about other developers non-standard development practices while ignoring broken build notifications. Those who can do, those who can’t watch.

The Waiter

The Waiter is harmless enough, however they can be frustrating. Waiters are very common and come full of wonderful catch phrases like, ‘we are kind of low on work, do I did some online reading’, ‘I am waiting on ______’. Or the classic ‘I am ready to take on something new’. The Waiter is good in that they do not do to much work thus limiting the damage they can do. However they often times pass on work to more advanced team member out of sheer laziness stating that the work is above their skill level.

So there it is! The most common personality types I have run into in my career so far. I am sure you all have your own list, feel free to add them.