Recently we were gaining feedback from a client when they were at their most honest (after a few beers) and my colleague posed the question “Is it our process or our people that add more value?”. We debated it on our current project and past experiences and my initial gut reaction was that it is definitely both. I’ve been on projects with good people using big up front design, heavyweight documentation for documentation’s sake, and a lack of automated testing and I personally felt the lack of efficiency and tremendous amount of waste that the team produced. They were some of the better software developers I’ve worked with though, so the process is definitely important.

Conversely I’ve worked with or managed teams that leveraged agile methodologies and lean processes and tools and I’ve seen first hand the friction that one or two people can produce that bring these otherwise highly capable teams to a halt. Whether the issue was ego, lack of experience, unwillingness to learn, or inability to improve, if these people were surrounded by other talented individuals and a viable process, how could they bring an entire team down around them? Obviously, people are just as important as the process.

In each of the instances where individuals created havoc, the friction was caused by a person with a different set of values than the rest of the team. One of the things that really excites me about my current team is that there is no question what motivates us to sling bits on a daily basis. We are striving to delight our customer with the software that we produce. End of story. There are no misconceptions among the current team or potential team members about what we do, so there are no issues with individuals having values that are contrary to the overall team goals. We are lucky in that we also have a proven, lightweight process that enables them to be successful. So back to the original question, is it the people or the process?

At the time we discussed this, the agile manifesto value of “ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” did not even occur to me. The thought leaders those many years ago already answered this question in the same form as my client. Both can help, but the key is people. In my own personal experience however, I saw poor results with great people, so what gives? Further reflection revealed that the missing ingredient with that fore mentioned team was empowerment. Bringing great people onto a software development team can yield equally good and bad results, the key is to make sure that these team members are empowered to do what’s right by the end goal. Empowered teams will have the wherewithal and courage to stand up and change a process that is not working. They will also become self policing and weed out other team members that are later found to have a different value system than themselves. In short, hire great people, empower them to do what’s right by your business, and then stand back and let the process evolve around them.

Photo courtesy of marianovsky on flickr.

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