Prima donna - 50 ways to kill your project

While we are talking about developers - there is one group, which 'deserves' a separate entry. These are software prima donnas - boys and girls who have one major goal - to look smarter than the others. Much smarter that is.

As you can imagine with such agenda there is not much good they can contribute to the project. It was kind of obvious to me since my day one. But I had no idea about how much harm to the project a single prima donna could do...

Let's look at them for a moment - it's easy to spot them – get the whole team in one room and talk to them about anything - if you see a person with silent disapproval on the face - this is your prima donna working hard for her throne. What always amazed me was the fact that the subject of the talk was irrelevant, the person talking was irrelevant - prima donna had always this unhappy 'I would do it much better' face.

Now, don't get me wrong - it's not like every project has them - in my whole professional life I worked closer with only three of them.

They are rare, but they are deadly.

Their number one goal is asserting their superiority. They have all kinds of power tricks in their arsenal: misleading, information hiding, gossiping, marginalizing others’ achievements, coloring up own achievement, over complicating things to arrive as a great savior of the day afterwards, asking questions without good answers, refocusing toward my areas of expertise, implying others' lack of competence, learning some very detailed part of knowledge and dragging it out whenever possible, you name it.

If they manage to achieve that they try to find followers - they are a building opposition business now. First of all they spread 'being unhappy' atmosphere. After all they need to be in opposition to something - the existing order of things. That means that current state of affairs has to be a bad one. If it isn't it has to be made one. And as we all know, unhappiness spreads easily so soon enough you will have an unhappy crowd instead of the team. And then it's usually too late to save a project.

Now, is it possible to fight the 'sneaky prima donna sabotage'? Of course it is - all you have to do is to show that the prima donna superiority is a fabricated one. Provide enough visibility on prima donna work effects (software creation related) and two things will happen: first of all everybody in the team will see that there is nothing special in prima donna performance, this is just as normal person as we all are; and secondly that would also force prima donna to focus on what he should be focusing on - software development. That should put prima donna covert operation into sleep (until better times come).

Or if you want a long-term solution - as soon you spot prima donna operating just split with her. You have my word - she will find another job and will be as unhappy there as she is with you. That's what prima donnas do.