Why T-shaped people?

A T-shaped person is capable in many things and expert in, at least, one.

As opposed to an expert in one thing (I-shaped) or a “jack of all trades, master of none” generalist, a “t-shaped person” is an expert in at least one thing but also somewhat capable in many other things. Alternate phrases for “t-shaped” include, “multi-skilled”, “generalizing specialist”, “icicle-shaped”, “paint drip”, and “broken comb”.

I-shaped vs generalist vs T-shaped

T-shaped people is about adapting to varying demand.

Product delivery teams get asked to do a lot of different things, each of which require different skillsets.

Stuff to do vs what we can handle

We have two general ways to respond to this. The first is to adjust what gets scheduled to balance against what we can handle, aka demand-leveling.

Address variability by shaping demand

The second approach is to make our response more adaptable through T-shaped people.