Software Engineering Teams Jelling Cost

When you have multiple teams falling behind, and you have new hires, do you peanut-butter those new hires across all your teams, or do you staff one team accordingly before moving to the next?

As I’m reading through An Elegant Puzzle — Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson, Will offers an elegant answer to the above question. The following post summaries my notes on Will’s approach.

Consolidate your efforts

Ensure that at least some of your projects finish

When you have multiple teams falling behind and you have new hires, the most natural approach will be to allocate each new hire to each team accordingly, framing it as fair. However, it’s not a fair outcome it no-one gets anything done. After all, you only get value from projects when they finish. You must ensure that at least some of your projects finish.

As such, it’s better to prioritize each team at a time. If all teams are struggling, then hire onto one team until it’s starts “treading water”, and then move to the next.

Adding new individuals to a team disrupts the team’s jelling process, it can move from “treading water” to “falling behind”. As such, it’s much easier to have rapid growth periods for any given team, followed by…