Here are two examples:
- The customer bought resources from all over Germany and asked them to work on one single site from Monday to Friday. They were not introduced to the existing teams but rather appeared suddenly. Their skill profile was not compared to the needs of the teams. Nor were the teams asked, if they needed additional manpower. Since the existing team members were surprised by the appearance of new colleagues, they were reluctant to introduce the new guys to their processes and tools. Planning was inaccurate as well - they never knew, what they had to deal with. For a new member to be fully productive, it took about nine months. Most external people stayed between one and one-and-half year with the company. This meant quite high costs. Those were not transparent though: For controlling, the people worked eight hours a day. Nobody cared to measure the benefit for the company. Thought was lacking anyway: On one instance, the company brought in 50 new people within a month and didn't even care if the project could absorb those.
- Another customer found that they lacked certain expertise in one specific area of their business. So they went looking for the right specialists on that topic. They found them half way across the country, concentrated in a single company. Both firms decided to partner and started to work together. Two teams were formed, each consisting of employees of both companies. During the first months, they all worked on the same site (later, they worked distributed). They all tried hard to get to know each other. Sponsored events (usually involving lots of beer and pizza) added their share. The teams were allowed to self-organize all aspects of their work: Team constellation, core working hours, location of work (including traveling to both sites, if necessary) and so on. When a need for additional expertise surfaced, the teams brought that up themselves. New members were productive after three months. The average member stayed three to five years. Velocity soared up and stayed high.
So what was different between those two companies? Apart from the methodologies (who organizes whom, how is productivity measured and so on), there was only one major difference: The first company looked for resources, the second looked for people. They were treated accordingly.
People tend to like being treated as such. There is nothing like "human resources", even though many departments carry that name (It's not "legal resources" or "manufacturing resources" either. So why don't you try something different? "Human affairs" maybe. Or "People Development". Think about it.). Especially in a knowledge worker environment, you cannot easily replace any given person. People have complex relations. While you can tick of their JAVA-skills, you cannot evaluate in advance, how the team will work together. Treat your team with respect and trust so they can prove you right. You will like the results.