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RE: [epf-dev] Mock Up of General Intentions and Collaborative Principles

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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