Poor-Performing Individuals on a High-Performing Team

Before we get too deep into this particular subject, it’s important to note that not everybody on a high-performing team will always be a “10X programmer.” In fact, on any given high-performing team, you’ll see a wide range of skills. Merely being the slowest developer on the team does not indicate a poor performer, particularly if that individual provides valuable contributions in other ways.

People can contribute in lots of different ways. During his time on the Microsoft patterns & practices team, Ward Cunningham (the inventor of the “wiki”) was praised for his contributions that had nothing to do with code. It turns out that Ward has an uncanny ability. He can sit in a meeting, listening to groups having difficult discussions and saying nothing until the discussion reaches an impasse. When nobody can see a way forward, he’ll ask that one critical question that breaks the logjam and gets everybody moving again. That’s not a skill you pick up as part of a Computer Science degree or boot camp certificate, and it made him invaluable to the teams, regardless of what his code looked like.

Identifying your poor performers means finding those individuals who don’t struggle with just one part of the job, but with all parts of the job. They don’t deliver their code on time, their code is constantly incomplete or incorrect, they don’t communicate their current status well, and so on and so on. The people on your team who consistently underdeliver (and often, if they are ...