The Basics of Tiger Team Programming

August 12th, 2007

Tiger Teams often refers to a team of specialists who penetrate security systems on their side in order to test them. It also is used to refer to an ad-hoc team pulled together to solve a particular crisis or thorny problem, such as the team NASA flight director Gene Kranz put together to deal with the Apollo 13 explosion. In this article, we’ll examine how you can put together a problem solving team within your organization.

Why ‘Tiger Team’?

Many IT organizations have support group within their development section. However, most have unappealing names like “Internal Support” or “Operations and Processes Support Group” or some other decidedly unexciting name. By giving this kind of work a dull name, particularly one with support in the title, it generates the perception that the work is dull and perhaps even dead end. Using an exciting name for the work spices up the assignment and sells it better within and outside the organization by adding prestige, importance, and maybe just a little mystique to the assignment. You don’t have to call it tiger but at least use something that builds excitement and doesn’t drain it away.

What Does A Tiger Team Do?

The job of this team is to take care of short term, high priority, projects and problems that always seem to come up. For example, while you’re working on a new release, a critical security flaw shows up in the previous release. Rather than going into a panic and pulling people off the new work in a disorganized fashion, the tiger team goes into action and fixes the problem. Another example would be if the accounting department needed a quick set of reports for investors, the team could put them together quickly. The idea is for this team to provide a quick solutions to unexpected scenarios.

Another use for this kind of team is to provide support to an existing project team. An example of this would be if the project team needs to have additions and changes made to the source control system ASAP. The tigers could step in and take care of it without taking the full team off course. They could also do things like bringing new programmers up to speed and other such things that would take primary project programmers off their assignments.

In general, the assignments should not be any longer than 1 to 2 weeks (preferably even shorter), not involve more than 1 or 2 people, and should be very limited in scope.

Who Should Be On A Tiger Team?

Many organizations have downtime for members between projects. These people are ideal for tiger team assignments. If you don’t have a lot of downtime in your group, pick one person as the tiger on each development team along with one alternate. This allows team leads and managers to factor this into schedules and lets the person with this assignment know that they may have to switch gears from time to time.

Another key factor is to rotate this assignment throughout a development team and base assignments to it on personal work preferences. Bear in mind that some programmers thrive on this kind of work while others dislike it. Some programmers welcome a change of pace from a current project while others find it an annoying distraction. Take this into account. While everyone should take a turn at it, know your team’s preference and juggle your scheduling of this assignment accordingly, perhaps giving those who enjoy it more of these assignments than those who don’t.

If done wrong, assignment to such a team can be seen as punishment and thus become undesirable and unappreciated work. For example, keeping people assigned to doing this kind of work long term without assigning them to a full sized project generally isn’t a good idea. Many programmers will find this demotivating. However, when done right, it can be a positive recognition of a team member’s contributions to the organization and provide critical cross-training within your group. Make sure that you provide as much genuine praise for those who do this kind of work as you do to those working on full sized projects.

Your Thoughts

Have you tried tiger teams or other similar groups within your organization? What was the result? Do you have any other observations about the article or ad-hoc teams? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Entry Filed under: Development Teams

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