When one works in software development, like I do, and one does not work in frequent contact with clients and colleagues, like I do, it is very easy to lose track of the real world value of the work that one does. Instead it is easy to get caught up in the technical details of the work, especially the mistakes, the shortcomings and the imperfections.
Yesterday I went in to London to go to the official launch of the new website of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association at http://ilga.org/. It was a multi-hour affair with moving speeches from representatives from around the world talking about the importance of awareness, sharing experiences and making contact with a community.
The website was built through a partnership between BT and ILGA. Rather than BT giving ILGA a pile of cash they did something I think much more valuable: They gave time and expertise. That took the form of developers from Osmosoft who worked on developing and refining the website for about eighteen months. That built a relationship between those developers and the people and issues from ILGA. Relationships can be transformative.
I was not directly involved in the ILGA project (except at the very beginning when doing proofs of concepts) but it is built on TiddlyWeb so I provided a supporting role. I went along yesterday mostly as a gesture of continuing that support. What I got instead was a very strong reminder that the technical details of the work, especially the mistakes, the shortcomings and the imperfections are minor concerns in the grand scheme of things. TiddlyWeb has its flaws and frustrations, the additional ilga code is a fair amount of bubble gum and bailing wire. But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is the impact of the work. Without much marketing, the new website is already drawing many hits and comments from around the world. And right on the front page is a map that makes it very clear that just because you love your lover several repressive regimes in this, the 21st Century, claim the right to kill you.
Rafe Colburn’s Extreme agility is getting a lot of reads, especially Ryan’s comment. I’ve heard a lot of “How can we be more like that?” and “We’re sort of like that, but how come we don’t get anything done?” reactions.
In my former life as the other founder of Blue Oxen Associates I did a lot of thinking about effective collaboration. Blue Oxen’s work lead to a succinct definition of collaboration:
Collaboration occurs when groups of two or more people interact and exchange knowledge in pursuit of a shared, collective, bounded goal.
Collaboration happens all the time, but there is a big difference between simply collaborating and collaborating well. A team that is able to be effective with extreme agility is clearly doing some effective collaboration. So what’s the trick? Why can’t we all have that?
The guys that work on GitHub have chosen to do the work they are doing. This is the single most important factor in effective collaboration (There’s probably an entire book somewhere in support of that statement). Beyond that important choice, the developers have a greater chance of success by having a clear overarching goal that encapsulates lots of smaller, actionable goals. I don’t know what the goal is, but I can guess it is something like: “Make GitHub Awesome!”. The github guys can talk purposefully about this goal because they have the language that allows them to talk about it in a way that makes sense to them. This language is important both before the goal is fully formed as well as when breaking the big goal down into little goals and tasks. If the language is shared well enough, the tasks don’t need to be made explicit in todo lists, task cards or whatever, they simply fall out naturally from shared understanding.
In general terms:
- Collaboration is SharedAction.
- SharedAction is the result of a SharedGoal.
- A SharedGoal emerges from SharedUnderstanding and SharedLanguage.
If you find yourself in what’s supposed to be a team but it doesn’t seem to be gaining any collaborative synchronicities you might ask yourself if you really know what your goal is. If you can’t articulate that goal, take a step back and see if you can build some understanding amongst the group. Not about the immediate tasks, but the goal. If you find that you can’t talk about that because you don’t have the language, then step back again. You may find that you have to take a lot of steps, but until you have the language, effort spent on what you assume are the goals is potentially wasted.
