Jiri’s Notepad

Harvard Business School working knowledge, which I am subscribed to, often comes up with interesting research papers on people behaviour. The good thing is that even though the papers they publish are lengthy, they are give strong arguments evidence. One of the most recent papers dug into Wipro’s data on performance of small development teams and came up with some good points applicable to project-based companies that complement some of my own thinking on project staffing:

1) The more experience a project manager has, the better chances he/she will hit the milestones and budget
2) Experience of individual engineers in their current role increases quality of the output
3) The familiarity of the team increases the likely success of the project. The team is exchanging information more freely when there is a pre-existing trust, and where the people are more willing to engage in mutual relationships

First and second point broadly support the typical split of responsibility between the project manager and architects on a project. The third point probably has some interesting implications on how to manage the rotation of people between projects.