2022-03-31
Someone smart said to me that “Teams are Immutable”, so they would contend that if you add or take away one member you essentially have a whole new team because the dynamics and skills within the team are different. So how can you convey that idea that the team is significantly different at different stages in time?
Immutability as the backing data structures for teams is a super compelling mental model. People intuit this during every transition. “This is going to change the team”…the language of mutability. It feels primed for loss, and slightly hopeful for improvemement. Changing the mental model to “this is a fork of the team” seems to mitigate the feelings of loss in my mind.