Hi Steve,
Thanks for the great start on
collaborative principles. I think this is something missing from BUP – a well-defined
concept of collaboration. It would be useful to have a Concept guidance in BUP that
addresses collaboration.
Here are some ideas to add to your
collaborative principles of Trust, Vision, Intent, and Skill. They come from “The
Wisdom of Teams”:
- Mutual
Accountability – Each collaborator is accountable/answerable to each
other. This may be under the same umbrella as Trust.
- Shared
Vision or Common Purpose – Clarifies that the people collaborating
share a common vision. If different people have different visions it’s
hard to get things moving.
- Common
Set of Specific Performance Goals – All collaborators should be measured
by verifiable outcome-based goals (as opposed to activity-based goals). Team
members should be measured by outcomes that address customer problems and
concerns, not the completion of activities. E.g. “within 6 months,
reduce the time between deliveries from 4 months to 3 months.”
- Commonly
Agreed Upon Working Approach –The team works together in a
particular way such as sharing drafts early and getting team agreement
before moving forward on any initiative. An individual doesn’t work in
a manner significantly different from the people they’re
collaborating with, e.g. by refusing to release a document until it’s
in the final form.
I’d like to add “Generosity”
to these. A group of people can have the trappings of collaboration (Scrums,
workshops, etc), but little collaboration exists if people aren’t heard from
or if their contributions are dismissed. Collaboration without generosity
results in a de facto hierarchy of authority where a few (or just one) define
the vision and possess veto power. The result is an imposition of vision,
values, and methods rather than shared ownership in the team’s goals and successes.
There’s a lot of discipline required
in having a generous nature, as each person has to consistently get over the
notion that their ideas or methods should “win”. Generosity is the
perspective that all ideas or contributions are not ends in themselves. They’re
the material used by cognitive and social processes to move the team towards its
common goal.
- Jim
____________________
Jim Ruehlin, IBM Rational
RUP Content Developer
Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Committer
email: jruehlin@xxxxxxxxxx
phone: 760.505.3232
fax:
949.369.0720
From:
epf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:epf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of "steve"
<steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006
12:31 PM
To: "'Eclipse Process
Framework Project Developers List'" <epf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [epf-dev] Mock Up of
General Intentions and Collaborative Principles
Hello Everyone:
I’m having a bit of a tough time working my way up the
CVS/Eclipse learning curve (at this moment the designer of the Eclipse/CVS
feature may be feeling the itch of my projected frustration….:-( ) and my
lap top is getting ready for the big desk in the sky…..So with our
Tuesday deadline looming I did not want to miss getting a few of my ideas into
discussion for Thursday.
I have attached a word document that can serve as a mock-up
of a proposed set of general concepts for BUP, collaboration, iteration,
requirements management, and architecture. These concepts are broken down into
philosophical principles (why is this concept important and what it’s
objectives are) and specific actionable practices (how do you implement these
castle in the sky philosophies). The practices should eventually be linked to
specific BUP tasks, roles and artifacts. Much of what these general principles
are about is providing the context and intention behind specific tasks, roles,
and artifacts. For collaboration I have drawn for John Boyd’s principles
for organizational success (trust, vision, intent, and skill). I have
then tried to propose seven specific collaborative practices that implement and
give rise to these principles.
My intention is these general principles can be added to BUP
as a separate plug-in (General Principles plug-in) perhaps.
That all said, these principles, and especially the
collaborative principles, will be seen as a “bag on the side” of BUP
if they are not integrated into specific BUP tasks, roles, and work products.
This will definitely give rise to some controversy. For example, in the
collaborative practices, there is a practice named “Manage By Intent” whose ultimate
actionable manifestation is coarse grain task assignment (e.g. 2 to 3 days in
scope). This will have a significant affect on Kirti and the project management
discipline. But more than that: is coarse grain task assignment something we
all agree with? Personally, I think fine grain task assignment is at best
silly, but then many people may think my ideas are silly. Another
practice is “Buddy Up”
more than one person shall have responsibility for a task. One person may of
course have “primary responsibility” that is they are the task
owner, but others are also made responsible for the performance of the task
(e.g. review). This practice can manifest itself as pair programming, adjacent
programming, or programmer/reviewer pairs (or even triples) but it changes the
way work is assigned ( or signed up to ) by team members.
In short there is a lot of new territory to cover here on
the collaborative side and I am going to need all the assistance and willing
volunteers that are willing to collaborate on this. Personally, I think this is
going to be the most exciting part of BUP – but then I may be biased J
I will open several Bugzilla issues for this.
Chat with you all later after I figure this
*&#%%@*I!U@++#@(@&&!))) piece of fine software.
Steve
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