Leading Within: How to Build a Team

How can you make 10+10=28? A team is not just an organization: it’s a group of people working together toward common outcomes. The focus is on the outcomes, not the org chart. I’ve been building and leading teams for most of my 20+ years in technology, so I’ve learned a lot about what makes a good team...at least what has worked for me. A few years ago, I was brought in to lead a Center of Excellence. My remit was to fulfill the promises previously made that our services would be “better, faster, cheaper”. It wasn’t even close. We needed to optimize with 12 internal team members and leverage 6 open positions to overcome obstacles and drive value. The first objective was to stop the bleeding. We were releasing code almost every day with limited processes and tooling, and only “tailored” code quality gates. While our primary focus was on fixing defects, we also were doing more feature development without a framework for prioritization or enough hours in the day. Exciting opportunity with big challenges.