Cliff Berg shared the following article on LinkedIn. It’s a view that to be honest, I’m struggling with. Why? I guess first, because of the role and privilege that Cliff has as an influential and leading voice in the agile community. And second, because I’m not sure my experience (and opinion) aligns with his…

Here’s a snippet from the article—

Let’s make this very tangible: If I needed to assemble a team to build a product, and I had a choice between ten inexperienced but smart programmers or five very experienced and equally smart programmers, I would pick the team of five, hands down. I would not hesitate one second.

And even if I had a choice between ten inexperienced smart programmers or five highly experienced but slightly less smart programmers, I would still pick the latter.

Let me put it another way: If I had a choice between five inexperienced and smart programmers, or five experienced and smart programmers who cost twice as much, I would pick the latter. In fact, if those experienced programmers cost three times as much, I would still go with them. Five times as much? Yes - I would still go with them.

While Cliff is absolutely entitled to this perspective, I passionately disagree with it.

Now I absolutely value experience. Especially in software developers and other creatives. Experience is great, it rocks, and more of it is usually better. But I don’t think it’s the ONLY thing to consider when building teams. I think solely focusing on anything can be a bad strategy. It lacks balance, nuance, and yes, diversity.

I’ve personally discovered that diversity in teams gets better results. AND, I’m willing to look for it, find it, and pay for it. When I’m forming high-performance teams, I look for many factors (in addition to) experience. Factors that include—

  • Diversity of ideas

  • Diversity of business, professional, and technical experience

  • Diversity of successes and failures

  • Diversity of background

  • Diversity of life experience

  • Diversity of thinking

  • Diversity of generations

  • Do I need to keep going?

But hey, we’re all entitled to our perspectives. And it’s particularly interesting to read the comments to Cliff’s article.

Stay agile and please consider staying diverse, my friends!

Bob.

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