Recently at my in-house job I find myself doing less “web design” and doing more User Interface design, as well as a lot of UX research/design/testing. This has caused me to really step back and see team development in a new perspective.
The more interaction I have with our engineers (local, and offshore) the more I understand their world, and how it relates to me as I develop the front end of a lot of our applications, and the more user testing, and UX related research I do the more I have really come to a good understanding of all of the components and effort (individual and team) involved in making a great product (and or website) that is visually appealing, easy to use, and truly beneficial to the end user.
So this is the start of a new series on designing/developing in a team environment and how to take steps to ensure that you and your team are working towards success. Wether you are a team lead/manager or one of the cog’s in a bigger mechanism each role is important and if we can learn what we can contribute to the team we can help insure the success of the products/web sites that we are a part of creating.
The series will be split into four parts:
1) Coding for the good of the team.
2) Bridging communication gaps.
3) There is no I in team… and no U in win.
Hopefully as we look at these (an possibly a couple extra) points we will be able develop a focused pursuit of development team bliss, granted it may not be as easy as it sounds, but developing a solid dev team that works together to accomplish a common goal is instrumental to the success of any design firm, start up, and or top secret missions.
I will be posting part one of the article before weeks end. If you have any suggestions for things I may not have covered please feel free to drop me a line, and I will do what I can to incorporate it into the series.
~ Aaron I
** Don’t forget to hit me up if you are going to be at FOWA Miami in this next week… I look forward to catching up with as many of you as I can.
Very interesting topic, Aaron. I am looking forward to the details.
I will be at FOWA so hopefully we will get to talk in person next week.
@Farhan,
Thanks… I will look forward to catching up.
~ Aaron I
Very cool, looking forward to it.
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There is a “ME” in team though!
In all seriousness you should probably touch on commenting, documentation, structuring code, and standardizing naming and label techniques to further improve efficiency.
Looking forward to the articles.
Nick,
Thanks for the input… for the record there is also eat in team
Anyhow… I definitely plan on touching on those subjects, i like the input about naming conventions… will definitely touch on that.
~Aaron I
Just wanted to point out that, although it is an ubiquitous symbol, 3 gears set up that way won’t turn!! Only even numbers of gears can turn together.
Otherwise I’m enjoying your blog, thanks for writing!