Self-Determination in Software Development Organizations

Organizations like GitHub and Valve empower their employees to make a great deal of decisions that many organizations would see as management privilege and prerogative. In these organizations, employees can determine their work schedules, their work environment, the location of the personal workspaces, and even chose the projects that they will work on.

In these organizations, coders themselves determine even the direction of their companies' products, the creation of new products and features, and release and market schedules. They can have a greater impact on strategic direction than a crew of middle management.

Developers have been saying for years that management doesn't understand enough about the work of software development to make the decisions about work products. But are developers capable of making decisions that amount to company and market strategy? Well, apparently it is already being done.

And yet, this style of organization has been pushed to its limits in "Agile" software organizations, and the results aren't always pretty. Sometimes, developers make profoundly shallow decisions that justify the need for guidance and directed authority.

One of the founders of Lean Software Development pointed out that Self-Directed Work Teams (SDWT) didn't turn out to to be the silver bullet that they were supposed to be. She has pointed to other organizational development concepts such as Requisite Organizations as alternatives to explore.

Are GitHub and Valve onto something new, or have they re-invented an approach that is bound to fail? Is there something about the character of their chosen employees that makes it work? Is it a matter of methodology or a matter of character?

This month at Lean Software Austin, Sukant Hajra leads a discussion about software development organization, self-organization, culture, and the individuals that do the work.

Here is some supporting material for this month's meeting:

The Valve Handbook (http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf) How GitHub Works (http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works/) SMWT's: A Team Effort (http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_sdwt.htm) Requisite Organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requisite_organization) Join Austin’s Lean Software Development community and Sukant Hajra for another lively chalk talk on next-generation software development ideas.

Our gracious sponsor, Compass Learning, will be providing pizza and drinks, as well as their spacious meeting facilities.

Parking is available for Lean Software Austin participants in Compass Learning's parking lot immediately adjacent to Compass Leaning on the North side of the building at the corner of Colorado and 3rd.