By Ali Anani and Bas de Baar

Imagine all the people in the world floating around, freely. They group together for a while, and some float further. Others dock to the people left behind. Clusters evolve and clusters dissolve. Relax, this is not a yoga excersise, this is the image we tried to create in our previous posting about The Big Pond.

Suppose a cluster is a group of people working together. Suppose this is a project. And now we take the stretch to the Fish Pond Metaphor, imagine your project is a Koi Pond.

We want to especially focus on the filter and drainage system of the pond as this will function as a fabulous metaphor for people docking and leaving your team.

The filtration system purifies the water of wastes, bacteria and other toxins. An aerator, such as a waterfall, pushes air into the water so the fish will have oxygen and the water does not stagnate. The pump moves the water through the filter and aerator. This cycle is the lifeblood of a pond¦ (source)

The Filter

As anyone that has worked some time in projects will tell you, the purifying element in teams is trust. Trust will enable smooth operations among the group members, it creates flexibility and creativity. Not every free floating developer will be able to enter the pond. The project should have some kind of filter, some door-policy who may enter and who doesnt. If everyboy knows your name and fame, and your are trusted, you pass the filter. In this way the fresh flow of trust is ensure while pumping in new team members.

The shrinkage of the global project playing field brings new challenges and opportunities. What happens if everyone lived in a small town? What happens if everybody knows everyone? Or at least, when someone you know, has a sister, that has a friend, that knows the other person? In this small pond, every fish has heard about the reputation of every other fish. And that is a good thing. In order to succeed you have to treat people nicely. You have to play fair.

If you want to enter the Koi Pond, you have to be kind and nice in the new world. The basic argument goes like this:

Lets assume I am a manager in US and I am looking for a virtual development team in India. If I treat people well and I have a good track record, the good people from India will work with me. If I treat people like dirt, the good developers will not work with me, and I will be stuck with the people of lesser quality. If I have people of poor quality, my project will be of bad quality. Therefor I will have a bad reputation as a manager in the US.

The filter on the pond ensures that only the people that bring in trust will enter the pond. The flattened and spiky world makes sure reputations spread faster than you can say Geronimo. Over a decade ago it seemed almost impossible for someone in Europe to have a clue about the reputation of some person in Africa. With the Internet we have reputation systems in place where crowds share opinions among eachother. On Amazon.com we share book reviews, on Ebay.com we share buyer and seller reputations, and on sites like WeVouchFor we even share reputations about IT skills. Although your local Koi Pond has just one filter, all the filters are working together in this way to ensure the flow of trust.

The Drainage

At the bottom of the Koi Pond is the drain. The drain pulls water out of the pond. Some fish in fish ponds generate a lot of wastes. A large amount of water is needed to balance these wastes. Wastes will reduce the amount of oxygen available to the fish and the older the fish are, the more acute the problem is. Oxygen concentration less than 3 ppm are catastrophic to the fish. Worse is that low oxygen concentration might kill the desirable fish and replace them with undesirable ones. Some undesirable fish populate fast and tend to migrate to the bottom of the pond making the water muddy. Muddy water can hinder the feeding ability of largemouth bass, bluegills, and redear sunfish and even reduce their growth. Additionally, phytoplankton growth and abundance is reduced in muddy water. This may compound the problem of poor fish growth in muddy ponds by reducing the amount of food available through the entire food chain.

A toxic employee is a well established fact, that brings down the level of trust within the team. Some employees are like fish that produce toxic materials that kill the fish themselves. It is a kind of suicide. In a fish pond this suicidal effect is multiplied. Toxic employees do the same thing. They spread negativity, demotion and stress through the organization. They contaminate the work environment and suffocate the morale of employees. Like in fish ponds, pollution might kill the desirable employees and replace them with undesirable ones. Or, the good employees leave before they are suffocated. The cost is high and the strategy is to prevent toxic employees from working in the organization by using the right filter. However, while toxic employees can be created over time, or the filter may miss something, the drainage should work properly. The members of the pond that muddle the trust should be released into the great wide open, floating free, away from you project.

Ali Anani got his PhD in chemistry in the UK (1972). As of 1981 Dr. Anani got interested in applying scientific approaches to economic and social issues.

Bas de Baar works as a Project Manager for over a decade. Since 2001, he has been the editor of www.SoftwareProjects.org, a popular website dedicated to Software Project Management.