A lot of developers have a marketing problem.

They​ can be great at their job but they think the measure of this is just the depth of their skills and the complexity of their solutions.

Following the initial hiring, this is not what you as a product owner ​c​are about.

​Y​ou want to know that ​the developer can deliver work on time and to specification.

​This is why hiring needs to consider attributes such as:

• willingness to speak up and question
• reliability
• communication skills

​These can be a bit hard to ascertain in an interview which is why you need the trial period I wrote about a few days ago.

These skills are critical to building a team of trusted contributors.

A highly technical team can fail if they cannot communicate and no trust exists between the members.

In commercial software development, predictability is more important than perfection.