Agile Software Development
Автор: Alistair Cockburn /
CHAPTER 3. Communicating, Cooperating Teams Teams as Communities
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Часть 3
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What does build teams? Luke Hohmann writes:
"The best way to build a team is by having them be successful in producing results. Small ones, big ones. It doesn’t matter. This belief has empirical support; see, for instance, Brown (1990). Fuzzy team building is (IMO) almost always a waste of time and money. "
I find support for this also in Weick's description of the importance of "small wins" (Weick 2001) as well as in interviews of successful project managers.
One successful project manager told me of a key moment when the project morale and "team"-ness improved. We found the following elements in the story:
· The people, who sat in different locations, met each other face-to-face.
· Together, they accomplished some significant result that they could not have achieved without working together.
· At some point, they placed themselves in some social jeopardy (venturing new thoughts, or admitting ignorance), and received support from the group when they might have been attacked.
The second of those characteristics is "producing results, " as Luke Hohmann mentions. The first and the third build amicability, the positive absence of fear and distrust.
Team Cultures and Subcultures
The project team itself creates a mini-culture. That mini-culture sits within the culture formed within the larger organization, and also within the dominant national culture around it.
Often, the programming project ends up with its own culture, different from the national or corporate cultures in which it is imbedded. People on the project find this useful, because they have a greater need to trade information about what is working and what is about to break.
Sometimes, the wider organization tolerates this different culture, and sometimes it fights back. One person who had experienced the resistance wrote, "Watch out for the organizational antibodies! "
Figure 3-19. Four organizational paradigms.
There are many ways to characterize cultures and their values. In one (Constantine 1995), sociologists name four culture types by their communication, power and decision-making habits (Figure 3-19).
Hierarchical cultures have the traditional top-down chain of command. Typically, older, larger corporations have a hierarchical culture. Many people internalize this as the dominant or natural or default corporate culture as they grow up, and have to be trained away from it.
Random is the opposite of hierarchical. It indicates a group in which there is little or no central control. Many startup companies work this way.
Some people consider random a fun way to work, and regret the loss of the small, informal group when the company grows. Others find it stressful, since there are no clear points of control.
Collaborative groups work by consensus. I had the opportunity to encounter a collaborative group in action at Lucent Technology: Consensus Culture at Work
Someone in the organization decided that use cases would be a good way to capture requirements, and asked me to teach a course to the people on a project.
I met the team leads (who are actually called coaches, because in a collaborative culture they don't lead, of course, they coach).
About a month later, I was called to teach it again, for more of the group. Several months after that, I was asked to lecture one last time, for the entire department. Even though the coach had decided that use cases were good, the group was not going to use them until they had all had a chance to see and understand them. The behavior of the coach in the final meeting was interesting: He programmed on his laptop while I taught. He was physically present in the room, but only just barely. Far from insulting, I found this fully appropriate in the light of the value systems in play around his situation. As a senior developer, he demonstrated that he was still contributing directly to the team's work. As a coach, he demonstrated support for the material being presented, which he was hearing for the third time. Thus, his behavior was a natural expression of his place in two professional societies: developer, and coach.
Synchronous, or "silent, " groups are the opposite of collaborative. They coordinate action without verbal communication, people performing their roles without attempting to affect the other roles' work styles.
Constantine gives two examples of synchronous teamwork. The first comes from a scene in the movie, "Witness, " the Amish community raises a new barn in a single day, scarcely uttering a word. The second comes from an accident that happened inside a hospital, when a heavy table fell on a person's leg. Without speaking to each other, the people in the room took coordinated action: two lifted the table, one held the person's hand, one went to call for an x-ray, and one went to get a gurney.
In both cases, the people involved knew the rules of the situation, the goals and the roles involved, and could simply step into a needed role. Constantine highlights that "team members are aligned with the direction established by a shared vision and common values. "
It may turn out, in an odd twist, that programmers operate a silent or synchronous culture. If this is true, it will be interesting to see how the cooperative game gets reshaped to fit that cultural pattern. Certainly, the current wave of development methodologies, including XP and Crystal, require much more conversation than previous ones. Either the programmers will shift their culture, or the methodologies will have to adapt.
In many organizations, programmers are expected to work massive overtime. It was a great shock to me to move from one such to the Central Bank of Norway, where personal life was strongly valued and overtime discouraged: Overtime Lights at Norges Bank
At the Central Bank of Norway, the official work day ended at 3:30. On a typical day, that is the time I suddenly waken from whatever else I am doing, and ask myself what I really want to get done that day. As a result, I found myself wandering the halls at 3:45, trying to "really get some work completed before the end of the day, " and unable to send faxes, get signatures on paper, or get questions answered. The staff really did go home at 3:30!
Then, at 5:00, the lights automatically turned off! I learned how to turn on the "overtime lights, " but got a second shock when the light turned off again 7:00 p. m. ("You really, really ought to go home, now. ").
Cultures also differ by their attitude toward frankness and politeness in speech. The Japanese are renowned for working to preserve face, while Americans are considered frank. Frankness is taken to extremes at places like M. I. T. , Stanford, and Israel. An Israeli friend was coaching me in direct speaking: When I saw him after he had to miss a review meeting, I said, "We missed you at the meeting. " He replied, "In Israel, we would say, 'Why weren't you there? '"
In other cultures, such as the church organization described earlier, even disagreeing mildly or taking initiative are considered slightly negative behaviors, signs of a person having excessive ego.
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