What is a team?

Sleep deprived musings

We talk about teams being the core unit of work in the post-industrial era, but a “team” is a somewhat abstract concept. What is a team really?

In terms of gestalt principles, we often use the law of proximity (frontend, backend, product, design). But those categorizations rarely reflect how we actually work day to day. More often than not, the true team is better defined by a closure. It’s a product of the interactions and goals of the actors.

In modern organizations it seems increasingly likely that the real team is not represented by the org chart. It’s more likely best captured by the group of people who meet regularly for a common purpose.

This leads to defacto, implicit multi-teaming, where different people have different overlapping sets of teammates. And of course speaks to the networked nature of work vs. being strictly hierarchical.