Team-first thinking treats the team, rather than the individual engineer, as the primary unit of work. Work is routed to the team, whose members collectively decide assignments and ways of working. Shared goals and recognition reinforce cooperation, while immersion in a domain helps engineers contribute beyond code. section 11.1.3
A team-first operating model emphasizes:
- Avoiding partial allocation across projects, because context switching reduces productivity. section 11.1.3
- Letting teams own and continuously improve their process instead of imposing identical agile processes or Jira workflows. section 11.1.3
- Keeping teams long-lived and their responsibilities manageable so they can build domain expertise without excessive cognitive load. section 11.6
Goals that pull against the product
An individual objective to write a certain number of stored procedures encouraged a team member to seek work that did not fit the product’s needs. Shared team goals would better align recognition with cooperation and product outcomes. section 11.1.3
