Team Composition - No women, no cry

This is the scene in a cubicle at work - Blabbah blabbah blah. More talking (read : gossip mongering, argument), than work getting done. Long e-mails. A lot of bitching. A heated atmosphere reminiscent of the cold war era. Humor, what is that? A long face and always curious what the neighboring teammate is upto. It gets worse if one of them gets extra attention from the manager.

Well, you know what's probably wrong in here. There are too many women in the project. More than 2 women can never be friends or see eye to eye in a project! The thumb rule is women should never be more than 50% strength of your team. If it is close to 80%, you are doomed - a perfect recipe for disaster. Whoever said this "Opinions are like asses. Everyone has one, and mine is better than yours." was very wise! As a Project Manager, you would find yourself judging whose is better, spending more time mediating feuds than taking the project to delivery. Things get worse if the Project Manager is a woman too. Now you know what I've gotten myself into, don't you :)

My lessons - For the success of a project, Diversity is very important in all forms - age, gender, educational background, experience, region of origin, aptitude etc! Just been a long day and what can be a better way to let off steam than blog about it!

Categories: project management, team building