Building a Better Development Team?

mlawmlaw asks: "I'm part of a development team that provides internal applications for a large pharmaceutical company. The team consists of about a dozen members, some coders, some application developers, and some vendor managers. About twice a year we do some sort of group exercise that almost always focuses on team building. After doing this for the past few years, we have found that while we have built a team that works well together, we have missed the boat when it comes to developing other team skills. We need to focus on better ways of identifying and solving technical problems and developing stronger critical thinking skills. But how do we do this? Teambuilding was easy, bring the team together and do exercises in trust, recognizing diversity, and discovering your teammate's backgrounds. So I am asking the Slashdot community, what have you found to be effective in building a better team other than exercises in teamwork?"

Comments

team effectiveness

[sribe]

Hire people with strong critical thinking skills ;-)

Re:Teambuilding

[Kris_J]

OK, jokes aside, sure you trust each other, but are you friends with one another? There is a very important distinction and I've found that friendship is far most important than trust. I don't always trust that my co-workers (and subordinates) will do things "correctly" or even their best. But for the most part they are also my friends and I feel comfortable approaching them if there is a problem or just some task to work on.

YUCK!

I'd much rather be able to trust someone to do their jobs than be friends with them. But I suppose that if none of you get anything right you all spend a lot of long days together. Me, I have actual friends outside of the company.

A company full of incompetent friends and an empty sack is worth the sack. Which is what some of your friends sound like they should get.

Re:hire me for a wekk to tell you what is wrong

[PhilHibbs]

hire me for a wekk

What currency is that? What would it be in Triganic Ningis?