Social Principles of Software Management

  • Alignment: Team is going in the same direction.
  • Separation: Teams have the right balance of skills for the tasks.
  • Cohesion: Team works together, and can reach decisions that all team members support.
  • Commitment: Team members are “all in”. Everyone is willing to work toward the common goal.
  • Transparency: Team members share what they are doing.
  • Responsibility: Each team member takes responsibility for their contribution.
  • Collaboration: Team members actively seek out help, opinions, or advice from other team members.

By algorithmically adhering to many of these social principles, emergent ‘flocking’ behavior can be observed in large groups of individual Boids.

Alignment

It can be hard to make progress if your team is not aligned to a common goal. This article on Keeping Your Team Aligned comes from the manufacturing industry, but gives some hints on staying aligned.
This principle relates to Theory Z and Theory W.

Separation

Teams need to have the right balance of skills for the tasks you have committed to performing, and the tasks need to be of sufficient granularity that they can be performed without the team getting in each other’s way. See this post on Separation of specifications and tasks.

Cohesion

The team must work together, and be able to reach decisions that all team members support. See this chapter on Team Cohesiveness at Boundless.com. This principle relates to Theory Z and Theory W.

Commitment

Team members need to be “all in”. Everyone needs to be willing to put out the extra effort it takes to achieve your common goal. This can be achieved most easily when the entire team can participate in setting those goals. See this blog post on Commitment-Driven Planning. It is important to get the team members’ explicit commitment. Do not assume they have bought in just because they attended the planning session. This principle relates to Theory Z.

Transparency

Team members must share what they are doing, so no one is surprised or has to question what happened after the fact. This is especially critical when working with a distributed team.
See the chapter on Pitfalls in Remote Team Coordination: Lessons Learned from a Case Study in Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. This principle relates to Theory Z.

Responsibility

Each team member takes responsibility for their contribution.

Team responsibility structure and team performance
Hans Doorewaard Geert Van Hootegem Rik Huys
Personnel review. , 2002, Vol.31(3), p.356-370

This principle relates to Theory Y and Theory W.

Collaboration

Team members actively seek out help, opinions, or advice from other team members.

J. Alberto Espinosa , Sandra A. Slaughter , Robert E. Kraut & James D.Herbsleb (2007) Team Knowledge and Coordination in Geographically Distributed SoftwareDevelopment, Journal of Management Information Systems, 24:1, 135-169, [http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/MIS0742-1222240104]

This principle relates to Theory Z.

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