Start together to improve results

1 easy way to improve teamwork and results is to simply start together.

That’s it. Start together as a whole team.

Most software teams have many levels of discussion and decision making before involving the the team that will build it. I propose breaking those down.

Many of the attributes that lead to high motivation, innovation, and creativity we want to “add in” later, can be achieved by simply starting together. Getting the team bought-in at a later stage is much harder than simply including them from the start.

I believe this is routed in how we naturally behave when intrinsically motivated (referring to self-determination theory). Starting together makes what we do part of “us” as individuals, instead of something external that we are told to do, so we are completely bought-in from the start — we remove the choice, because every team member perceives themselves as always being a part of it.

So, the real question becomes what is the earliest we can involve people? I suggest maximizing your ability to include them early without disrupting their current work. You’ll have to judge your team members for yourself.

There are a lot of levers to play with here. Each team members role might determine a different timing and/or amount of information to be shared. However, err on the side of earlier and together, then taper it back if it negatively impacts current work for some members (after all, current work should always be higher value/priority or it wouldn’t be done first).

When we start together, we don’t have to all work equally on the same thing the whole time. For example, if we kickoff a new feature, we have: sharing the vision, a bit of discussion, a small amount of technical feasibility investigation, and a large amount of market and design research. All these activities should be shared and visible to the team throughout. Yet, we all don’t need to work on it to the same level.

Start together and finish together. That’s how to succeed as a team.