When you rely on specialists, which do you lay off?

Dear Bob …

Another excellent analysis (“In general, a time for generalists,” Keep the Joint Running, 12/1/2008).

It raises an interesting question or two, though. We’re a small shop. Say we’ve got one of each specialist -– business analysts, application architects, developers -– and we need to cut back by one FTE. If I’m going to convert my specialists into generalists I’m going to lose some “efficiency” in one of the three tasks.

Let’s ignore the incumbents’ individual characteristics and confine this to the roles themselves.

• Which of the three individuals should I lay off?

• Are my decision criteria solely confined to role-related factors, or do such issues as the mix of upcoming projects also important?

– Specialized

Dear Specialized …

I think your conundrum reinforces my point (that by converting to methodologies that rely on generalists you can shed costs in a more granular fashion). So in your situation I think that in a layoff you will have no choice but to change your methodology.

My recommendation: Don’t ignore the characteristics of the individuals — their characteristics are the most important factor in this decision. Keep whichever two of the three are the most versatile … the most capable of taking on the generalist role … and layoff the third.

I’ll also challenge the idea that you’re going to lose efficiencies. Keep in mind that methodologies that rely on specialists, in order to achieve their greater scalability, add overhead. Small shops rarely handle enough volume to pay for this extra overhead.

I certainly don’t know the details of your situation. As a gross generality, I’d suggest that until you have at least a half-dozen employees in the application development and integration side of the house, it’s unlikely that specialization will pay off.

If you rely on generalists and do it well, you may find it never pays off to convert back to the waterfall methodologies that justify the use of specialists.

– Bob