202202011405 Teams abstract individuals over time

Ideally, teams hold knowledge, distribute work, and amplify members' efforts. They do this by making the specific individual replaceable over time.

While each individual is critical to a team at a specific moment in time, a generic individual is not critical to team over a period of time. This is a good example of 202104291540 Emergence because this property does not exist in the particulars, only in the sum of their interactions.

The team as a whole is responsible for the creation and later 202110231449 Externalization of knowledge. When one person leaves, the whole of that team’s knowledge doesn’t leave with them and can be passed on to new members.

The team as a whole allows for individual variations in workload, knowledge, and expertise. Teams amortize ups and downs and average out the flow of work in and out of the team while allowing individuals to be human, learn, and grow, take time off, engage and disengage, and be passionate about different things.

The team amplifies individual efforts in the same way. Different perspectives, knowledge, and experience allow individuals to do more through mutual support than they could do individually.

A valuable corollary to this abstraction is that 202204301406 Teams should own critical knowledge.