I have a colleague whom I used to view as a loud mouth. He was intelligent, articulate and full of life, but also arrogant and opinionated. He never talked quietly; he shouted, hurling his voice across the room.

One evening, he appeared just as several of us were leaving for dinner after a day-long meeting. I tried to send him go-away vibes, but he wasn’t in receive mode. When one of the others invited him to join us, he eagerly (and loudly) accepted.

Procrastination is sometimes called the putting-it-off disease. However, I think procrastination is vastly underrated. I rarely get as much done as when I'm putting off doing something I really don't want to do. It's amazing how many things I can find to do.

Your developers and designers often work on projects simultaneously from around the world. They need to modify the same files, make updates, and deploy multiple versions of the website or code across different sites. All the while, you hope they won’t cross wires, lose track of versions, or overwrite each others’ changes, any which scenario might set your upcoming release or project delivery date back by days. Sound familiar?

Personality matters a great deal when you need to be able to help a small team implement essential software configuration management practices. Small teams have dynamics just like any other team and you need to know what it takes to help your team achieve success. SCRUMs may have a maximum size of nine members, but you will likely find yourself in organizations where successful teams grow and you have to deal with the dynamics implicit in a successful team that now has new requirements for communicating and working together successfully. In this column, we will take a look at some of the essentials required for small teams.