I chanced upon a great panel at SxSW Interactive this year titled How to Create A Kickass In-House Design Team. This panel ended up being one of my favourites in the end, but not because it answered my questions but rather raised a few more for me.

The ‘Kickass’ Part

I have been part of building a kickass in-house design team over the last year and I now work in one of them. These are highly talented developers, designers and usability experts that are well known in their fields and with a bit of persuasion, good timing and straight up luck we have all ended up working together under one roof.

Most of this panel discussed what I already knew, and just confirmed to me how lucky I have it working with such a talented crew. The part that got me thinking was when one of the panelists mentioned ‘corporate buy-in’ being an extremely important part of the process of creating these teams in the first place. This is the part that concerned me and has for the last few months in my professional life.

The ‘Lose’ Part

What if you work with these talented professionals, have all the skills to do exceptional work and create exciting, new innovative products but the company just isn’t ready for you yet? What if they don’t understand what you do and why it is important to the company until one or all of you start to leave and they see what is really out left there in the professional world.

Some companies will never get it and these teams will just get bored, burned out or just see better things and move on. Perhaps some companies will realise what they have and try to facilitate some of these talented teams and attempt to create a more productive, challenging environment in which they can take full advantage of the skills in-house that they have at their disposal.

For those companies that are interested in maintaining kickass in-house design teams, here are a few tips on what might make someone think twice before jumping ship.

Let your team think.

Don’t just keep your in-house team there as on-call developers and designers that will perform maintenance and keep the site running from day-to-day, that’s what juniors are for. If you have a kickass in-house team, chances are you didn’t get them there by the allure of tweaking a few flash banner ads and closing a few <p> tags that are causing layout errors.

Make sure those senior guys get the big jobs that they are no doubt waiting for. Don’t outsource those excellent portfolio pieces due to time constraints or internal politics. Nobody likes to see a big job go to waste and you need to keep your skilled guys working, thinking and building new things for them to feel that they are enjoying their work.

Let your team talk.

These are the guys that have the ideas. They are online all day at work with multiple windows open… Twitter’ing, Flickr’ing, IM’ing and chatting with a dozen other like-minded geeks everyday about the next new concept that needs to be developed.

Not ready to hear these ideas? Well get someone who is, because chances are they are years ahead of you and once you want it they will be long gone and will have built it for that very person you are trying to catch up with right now. These technical translators are cheap, building the next big thing when it’s actually the big thing isn’t.

Let your team play.

Your team has many great ideas. They may not all have something to do with the project you are working on and you can’t expect employees to go home every night and work on these great ideas for the company.

Time at work should be set aside to hash out these ideas, collaborate, design and build in the work environment. From these ideas you will come up with many fresh, new ideas that will keep you ahead of the competition and will keep your team motivated and inspired to keep working hard, even when they have to deal with the day-to-day stuff.

Let your team bond.

Let’s face it, there is no kickass in-house team without a bit of social chemistry within the group. This means you have to promote that and allow the team to feel intimate with each other, trust each other and be able to freak out on each other once and a while. It’s a bit like a surrogate family for your 9-5 life.

Get out of the office and have a drink or two. Take planning days off-site once and a while and keep them interesting and casual. Don’t deny the team those launch parties after a big job where you get to kick back, have a beer or a good meal and watch the company foot the bill in the end.

Guarding this bond is also a requirement to maintain this dynamic. Prospective employees need to fit the team dynamic or you will feel it ripple through the group in the long term. Group interviews in the last stages of hiring are always a good idea and it’s easy to see if someone fits with the team or not.

Let your team enjoy.

Little things count. If I learned anything from a recent trip to Googleplex it’s that people love the little things when it comes to making their workplace enjoyable.

Free lunches, well-stocked fruit bowls, coffee makers and the odd work function. These are the things we can all do.

Salary sacrifice, good holidays, working from home, large monitors, comfortable chairs and good modern computers. These are the things we should all do.

The ‘Not To Lose’ Part

I am not talking Google here. We can’t all be as liberal as Google when it comes to keeping employees happy, but complacency and ignorance will cost you a kickass in-house design team if you are holding on to one at the moment.

Nobody wants to lose a team like that, it’s just bad business.