"Growing" your team

No, I don't mean how to make your team bigger by adding more people. I mean how do you get your team to grow as a team. How do you get them to trust each other and constantly strive to be better? Of course the first thing everyone always says is "Have you read 5 Dysfunctions of a team?"

But I wanted to present some of my personal observations both when I managed people and now as part of a scrum team. Here they are:

• Treat individuals as individuals - Folks are at different levels and places in their careers. Some are seasoned veterans who have stepped up and are leading the team, while others are followers. Not everyone is the same and no blanket rules apply. If someone has a particular strength try to accentuate it and improve their weaknesses. Who have to trust your team and guide them. For example, in one of my previous jobs I hired an information architect/technical writer who was very skilled. Rather than try to tell him to do this or that, I worked to give him the tools and guidance he needed to succeed. I let him teach me more about his style and work and then adapted my style to his. This technique really worked!
• Always Raise the Bar - Challenge the individuals on the team in different ways. As they grow in their capabilities, continue to raise the bar. For example, let's say you have a natural technical leader on your team who was unable to influence the team on a particular matter. Use this as an opportunity to brainstorm and discuss what happened and how it could have been differently. When you wait to discuss an opportunity for improvement you fail to raise the bar! I think sprint retrospectives are a great opportunity to be transparent, but the team can easily fall into a routine of only highlighting items outside the team for the challenges. For example "The business does not know what it wants" or "The server is not working". You have to recognize this and look to challenge the team to understand how they can participate in the solution.
• Be transparent - Constantly share your feedback, but also expect and embrace feedback. I have worked with a lot of folks who are so reserved you never know what they are thinking. I have found these folks so hard to read that they don't motivate the team since no one knows where they stand. This is easier to say than do. 
• Enjoy Yourself - Too many times it's easy to get caught up in a moment or are frustrated about a particular person or difficult goal. Enjoy what you do and more importantly enjoy who you work with!

Just some thoughts and experiences...

How I use Twitter to make Product Management Easier

The rise of social media has really revolutionized the tools I use for my product management duties. Over the past several months I have been using Twitter to really help make my life a little bit easier. Here's how I use Twitter and related tools:

How I use Twitter

• Listening to your customers - I like to see what our customers or prospects say about us. Do they like our product, are they complaining about a feature, are they happy about a new feature launch, etc. Just watching the tweets helps give me a feel for how some segment of our customers are responding. Often times, I read a tweet and forward it to the appropriate team/person. For example, if someone tweets about the great service they receive, I take a screenshot of the tweet and send it to the support team to give them some kudos.
• Listening to your competitors and their customers - The first thing I did when I installed Tweetdeck (see more in the Tools section below) was to add columns for searches for them and I started to follow them. Now I know when their customers are complaining, when the announce a new feature, what tradeshow or marketing event they are going to, etc. I get to see how their customers are reacting to them and all of this happens in real time. I typically check out tweetdeck on my phone whenever I have a free moment, just to stay on top of it. You have to be careful to not check it too often or it will suck up too much time :)
• Gather Market Data - This is really cool! Before twitter I used Google and it just wasn't effective...It took forever to get through the noise of all the search results. Often times I would click a link and the content wasn't helpful and then have to go back to the search and it just took forever. Now I just add a column in Tweetdeck with some keyword (or hashtag) I am looking for and the research just comes to me! With only 140 characters it is easy to quickly digest the nuggets of information and then find the right content. Because the content comes from people like myself, it is often relevant and helpful.
• Follow the right people - Easier said than done :). Often times I look to follow key employees of my competition, bloggers who seem to have a lot of good information, and of course employees of my current job. I try my best to use this stream of content to help augment my other twitter streams with content that can sometimes provide more context.

Tools

• TweetDeck - This is a great tool of aggregating a lot of twitter content in a customizable fashion. I know folks who use HootSuite which is a great tool as well.  Check it out here.
• TwitterVenn - I played with this tool a couple of times. It was kind of nifty but a bit slow. It provides a venn diagram that shows any overlap between tweets with same terms in them. I would recommend playing with it for a little bit by clicking here.

So if you have noticed I'm not really engaging in a two way conversation with my customers. You might be thinking that takes the "social" out of social media. You would be correct. Depending on your company this may not be desired (some companies have folks whose job it is to monitor and respond to customers). For the time being I just use it to listen and if I find something really useful I can always retweet it.

Thanks and have a happy new year!