Building a strong team culture for your development teams can provide a lot of great benefits. Great development teams thrive and provides a substantial amount of value for a company. In order to have a great development team with a good culture, sacrifice, hard work, and the desire need to be in place to make it happen.
For developers and managers joining (or creating) new teams will have challenges integrating (or building) a strong team culture. Different challenges can arrive through out a team's lifecycle. Managers will have their own set of challenges while individual contributors will deal their own set as well. What do they need to do to overcome their challenges to make a great team?
For managers, they need to have good leadership skills, and be active in the team's projects. Managers should lead weekly team discussions to communicate organization updates, important management decisions, and provide feedback on project updates. Attending scrum meetings at least a few times a month lets developers know that you are interested in their work and available to answer questions. Most importantly, be there for the developers. Managers should be available as much as possible to have one-to-one meetings, reply to e-mails, and listen. They should provide provide recognition when someone does well, and professional criticism to motivate when somone makes a mistake or weak in an area. Managers making the effort to "be there" for professional and personal circumstances makes a huge difference, and one step closer strengthening the team.
Developers wanting to part of a strong team need to be open-minded, communicate, and help each other on problems. Team meetings does not have to just be providing developer status updates on projects. They also should have a chance to ask questions, give feedback, or request assistance in training or solving a problem at a later time. Developers with the right skills and experience should help by giving advice, perform reviews, or put someone on the right track to success. It's frustrating to know many developers believe by taking away their time from their schedule to help with someone else's work will hurt them. Yes, developers have to hit deadlines, and can't always be accessible. But don't just focus on yourself to have a successful career. Focusing efforts to contribute to the team will lead to more successful outcomes. These efforts will generate positive impacts by sacrificing some time. Helping other teams members builds confidence, trust, skills, and strengthens relationships. Good managers will view the efforts positively, which could lead to a promotion or wage increase. Great developers not only have the technical skills, but the abilities to teach and communicate effectively to build a strong bond with their teammates.
Don’t just focus on yourself to have a successful career. Focusing efforts to contribute to the team will lead to more successful outcomes.
When team managers and developers overcome these challenges, they build a strong foundation for a great team culture. A great team culture benefits the company, employees, and customers. Productivity increases, employee morale improves, less turn-over, better return on investments, and the list of benefits could be endless. Remember, people don't achieve their career goals alone. People need advice, aide, and the ability network as a team to reach objectives. So if you have not started building a strong team at your company, then now is the time.