Remark: This blog post is dedicated to all the team multipliers I had the pleasure to work with over the years.
A naïve way to measure the productivity of a developer is to have a look at the individual work output(let’s just ignore how we measure work output in this post, everyone agrees it is number of lines written). The reality is that most software is developed by a team where the work output of each member is a function of work output from all their teammates. Measuring individual productivity can be hard to impossible.
Taking this approach would certainly leave out the most important people in your team; the team multipliers. These people may not accomplish a lot on their own, but their effect on the team’s productivity is exponential. It are those people who can make the difference between success and failure. They’ll typically don’t produce a lot of features on their own, but make the jobs of their teammates a lot easier, are always there to help, willing to do the dirty jobs.
Find the multipliers in your team. Recognize their value and say “thank you”. They are the real heroes in your team…
