I think the most productive teams have people with partly shared, partly complementing skill sets. The shared skill must be important communication enabler. Fo

I think the most productive teams have people with partly shared, partly complementing skill sets. The shared skill must be important communication enabler. For example, in a development team the shared skill sets could be ability to code (so don't bother with Scrum Masters and Product Owners who can't appreciate coding). But it does not have to be coding, I have also seen teams which were all proficient in financial markets and used it as their language. The complementing could be: - one with long beard who has lots of experience and knows how to and how not to do stuff, can debug the hell out of everything and acts as problem solver of last resort, - one who knows how to make beautiful graphics and UIs, - one who knows how to manage infrastructure efficiently and reliably and knows how to do all the tiny pesky things to make stuff happen, - one who is good at understanding the product side and can be liaison between dev team and clients/management (assuming he understands to use "we" rather than "I"), - one who is not afraid to dirty their hands and do the absolutely most mundane stuff that nobody else wants to touch with 10ft pole, and so on. I think this promotes ownership which is always a good way to get them motivated. On the other hand having people with exactly same skill set (for example due to constant hiring profile) tends to result in people who feel to be exchangeable cogs in the machine and less of ownership. At least this is my subjective feeling.